I actually thought the solar rooftop was really cool when it launched, and if I owned a home I would consider buying it. What happened? It sounds like Tesla intentionally sabotaged it.
They warranty the glass of the solar roof tiles "forever" (weatherization and energy generation for 30 years). They are only going to install a limited number of test cases until they know exactly what percentage of them will last that long.
The launch price -- $42/sq ft for the solar tiles, $11/sq ft for inert tiles that look the same -- is too high, and manufacturing yield is too low.
Finally, the first few roofs they installed took a Tesla team 3-4 weeks. I've read a couple cases in 2019 that took 2 weeks. I think they need to get installation time down to a week before they want to scale that any further.
In short, they probably lost money on every solar roof they installed in 2018, because that house is essentially acting as a real-world test bench. I think they will only install as many roofs as they need for testing purposes as they refine the design, manufacturing, and installation procedure.
If and when they cross the 20% margin point at a price that's still a premium over a new roof + panels, but not eye-wateringly so, they will scale production and start actually working through their order book.
The answer is more prosaic. Many people have worked on such technologies (the jargon is “BIPV” — building integrated photovoltaic for decades. The problems have included heat, safety, connections, individual cell failure, fire accessibility... heat in particular is bad (most panels have the back exposed for convection and radiation. Unsurprisingly, Tesla’s announcement in thisnspace claimed revolutionary achievement without mentioning how they planned to address the issues that had caused problems in the past.
Its a $50K+ product, so its only really an option for someone who would be willing to shell out for a slate or other high end roof. So, a small market. On top of that high end roofs last a long time (100 years) compared to asphalt shingles, so not many retrofit jobs are likely. New high end homes would be an option, but they would need building partners that would offer it in their menu of options. Doesn't sound like they have one.
Its really a headscratcher as to how they thought this would work out.
There's no indication that it's dead, it just launched prematurely (or early to create hype, charitably) before it was ready to scale. Powerwall 1 was similar.
Was it? I work in an adjacent space now (though didn't back then) and everything I've heard is that Powerwall 1 was vaporware. Even now, Powerwall 2s are hard to come by, though not to nearly the same extent — Tesla uses that product line as a way to soak up excess battery production when its car production bottlenecks, but historically batteries have usually been the long pole. That's essentially the only reason LG Chem/Sonnen/etc have any market share.
Gigafactory is a joint venture between Panasonic and Tesla. But either way, in a world where demand for batteries far outstrips supply, the contractual ability to buy a greater quantity — knowing they can be sold profitably in any form factor — is an asset. Underpurchasing would be squandering that asset.
No idea if this is true, but Tesla might have a contract for X batteries at Y$ but only end up needing Z<X for its car sales. In every industry it's a good idea to find a use for excess materials.
Sounds like they are trying to keep their investment alive until there is the policy of strong promotion of renewable energy which half the planet has been crying out for, for years already.
Elon Musk mentioned at the autonomy event that the latest version of the solar roof is currently on his house and works great. Seems like they are still working on it, but I had assumed it to be dead until he said that.
Its a great product, I'd think every home would benefit. But I'd like to know a lot more about how safe it is, especially when they get damaged and/or in a fire.
It seems to have been just one of those hype cons that Musk is so good at. Musk pitched it in order to rescue the investment made by SpaceX into Solar City.
Every time some approach fails economically/financially, Musk comes up new technology that needs some financing and sells it. He is cashing in his reputation as technical genius again and again. He hopes that that nobody notices how his ideas to turn profit constantly change and are just out of reach.
Tesla was supposed to make 20,000 Model 3 cars by December 2017. If that plan would have worked, Tesla would have needed those cells.
Large scale ramp-up of Model 3 has slowed down to crawl, and has not reached even 6000 cars per month. With those volumes debt will drown Tesla and something must be done. Musk gained new investors with full-autonomy and taxi service idea. Completely insane proposition considering the state-of-the-art and the fact that the regulation is something that the company can't really influence.
SpaceX invested in SolarCity? Didn't know that... And I found the white knight buy out of SolarCity by Tesla already sketchy compliance wise considering the shareholder structure.
The Boring Company may have also appropriated SpaceX funds. I think if this sucker goes down, it's going to surprise a lot of people here. Hacker News loved Theranos too.
Just that I get it. Instead of investing into new rockets and stuff like that SpaceX is funding a residential roof top solar company, which needed to be saved by Tesla, and a company that is drilling pneumatic tubes for cars (Teslas again) as a solution for traffic jams (like a good subway network wouldn't move more people). Nice move. Sounds almost like a snowball scheme to me.
SpaceX invested into SolarCity bonds. Musk has had the tendency to treat all his businesses as the same family operation. That's why other investors are little bit in danger.
Musk also takes loans against his stocks to invest other ventures - 40 percent of his Tesla stocks are leveraged to do other things. There is a fear that if one business crumbles, it will take healthy businesses with it.
There is a bit of nuance to this. SpaceX invested cash reserves in Solar City bonds. This wasn't an equity investment. While one can argue that people paying their electric bill monthly isn't as risk free of US treasuries (and that would be accurate), the risk was appropriately rated based on the returns.
Wow, so Musk used one of his companies, SpaceX, to fund one of his other companies, SolarCity. And when the latter one was going down the drain he used his third company, Tesla, to buy the failing one and save both his own and his first companies investment. Nice.
