Tesla Stops Selling Solar Roofs a Decade After Launch
The move follows years of weak sales, with Tesla installing just 3,000 solar roofs in the U.S. by the end of 2022, Reuters reported.
- On Monday, Tesla removed its solar roof tiles from its website, ending the product line nearly a decade after CEO Elon Musk launched it as a premium alternative to traditional panels.
- Musk introduced the tiles in 2016 to facilitate the SolarCity acquisition, but the product struggled with high costs and performance issues, installing only 3,000 roofs by 2022 and spawning lawsuits costing around $6 million.
- Tesla shifted its solar strategy toward traditional panels, which it now produces at its factory in Buffalo, New York, after bringing 300 MW of manufacturing capacity online this January.
- The shift aims to drive efficiency through economies of scale rather than pursuing specialty products; Tesla's traditional panel strategy reflects lessons from the solar roof's decline in market adoption.
- Tesla filed plans this month for a $10.1 billion solar-cell factory near Houston, Texas, a project expected to create 9,712 permanent jobs and expand domestic manufacturing capacity.
11 Articles
11 Articles
Tesla just killed Solar Roof after years of complaints and price hikes
The company told its certified third-party installers that Solar Roof is no longer available for new projects. Tesla will continue selling standard solar panels and home battery systems instead. Its former Solar Roof web address now sends visitors to the company's solar-panel page.Read Entire Article
Canary Media
ecotopical.comTesla ditches solar roof — and embraces regular solar panels
A thousand solar roofs per week. That was the pace Elon Musk predicted Tesla would install its electricity-generating roof tiles in 2020, more than three years after he unveiled the product to great fanfare on the set of the TV show Desperate Housewives. That estimate fell flat. Tesla managed to install a total of…
When Elon Musk presented his solar home tiles in 2016, the idea seemed simple: to replace the roof with a gigantic solar panel disguised. A few years later, this promise ran counter to the industrial reality, to the point that Tesla had just put a discreet end to his Solar Roof project. At the same time, thousands of kilometres away, a Chinese car glass giant decided to take over the torch... but directly on electric cars. As the Solar Roof disa…
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