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Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

electrek.co

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Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#161

Post by rootusrootus »

mulderc wrote: post #94
hvb2 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While i kinda agree with you, it doesn't fly for most US cities. Most US cities aren't dense at all. A lot of them were built with transportation in mind. London and European cities in general are so much older that their city centers have no real way to accommodate that. So what do you do? You provide non car options. Technically they exist in US cities too, but especially on the west coast they're just not a viable…

West coast cities like Portland and Seattle both have very good transit and in my experience is generally better than driving since traffic and parking are awful. Where I live on the west coast is a mid sized city and transit is completely viable, my family only drives on weekends for example.

> West coast cities like Portland and Seattle both have very good transit

I live in Portland. Traffic is often quite slow. And even then it is much faster than public transit unless your destination is just a few miles away and on the same line.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#162

Post by themafia »

jrmg wrote: post #11

Surely there’s a middle ground where a roof is made of something big and panel-sized, rather than a conventional roof with panels as another layer on top?

You can do that.

If you experience any failure, like a falling tree limb, you're now _required_ to replace panels to restore the integrity of your home.

It's far simpler to be able to just restore a roof, which any builder can do, and then come back and restore the panel layer again later.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#163

Post by kccqzy »

freetime2 wrote: post #115

> The economics never worked either. An average Tesla Solar Roof costs approximately $106,000 before incentives, compared to roughly $60,000 for a traditional roof replacement plus conventional solar panels — a $46,000 premium. The payback period stretches to 15-25 years, compared to 7-12 years for traditional panels. Yikes that’s a lot of money. For most people buying solar, I think payback period is probably the bi…

In my opinion, the Tesla Solar Roof really appealed to people who wanted good looks. They probably already have their “forever” homes and are not thinking of moving at all. It is more about the emotional attachment to this part of your home than its functional aspects. You can buy a $100 dining table from IKEA or you can buy a $1,000 dining table from Pottery Barn or you can buy a custom $5,000 dining table made from a solid piece of wood. It's the same functionality but emotionally very different.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#164

Post by xnx »

toast0 wrote: post #156
xnx wrote: post #74

Aside from power-independence, does solar on residential roofs ever make sense? For all the complexity of doing a few houses, you could do an entire parking lot (or empty land) and power the whole neighborhood.

I've got a consultant coming over on tuesday to take measurements and give a more solid quote for installation. We'll see. But I have an outbuilding with a large two plane roof and the south facing plane has no penetrations and is pretty much unshaded. Our utility rates have pretty much doubled over the last three years, and there's another ~30% increase scheduled over the next three years. Said roof is coming up on…

Good plan. Sounds like you're going into it with the right approach. Many homeowners accept the ROI calculation from the salesperson and don't account for opportunity cost and other factors.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#165

Post by kortilla »

objclxt wrote: post #85
kortilla wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mixing up Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX already produces solar panels for the 10,000+ satellites it has in space.

> SpaceX already produces solar panels for the 10,000+ satellites it has in space No they don't, they procure them from Taiwan Solar Energy Corp. They do not produce or manufacture their own cells, they're using off the shelf components.

Cells != panels. And why do you think there would be any issue scaling up what they have done for already the largest constellation by a large margin?

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#166

Post by ProAm »

No one should give money to this pedophile especially how killed every department looking into crimes committed by his company or his brothers companies. Such a disgrace to America. [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/jeffrey-epst...

[2] https://fortune.com/2026/02/13/kimbal-musk-jeffrey-epstein-h...

[3] https://www.denverpost.com/2026/02/13/kimbal-musk-epstein-fi...

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#167

Post by 1123581321 »

My thoughts are generally in line with the conclusion. The growth in the rooftop solar market has come from right-sized installations that can be put up in a day or two by a small crew. Minimizing crew and paperwork costs is important when quoting solar competitively; plus it reduces the complexity of operations at headquarters.

Cheaper installations generally win, especially when the homeowner receives a credit on the install for its projected or actual power generation (only federal credits tended to scale proportionally to the install cost.) This cost pressure has been hard for premium flat panel installers, which are in turn cheaper than Tesla was.

As acceptance of rooftop solar has grown, comfort with its aesthetics has also increased, reducing the need for solar that hides its nature.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#168

Post by brikym »

kccqzy wrote: post #163
freetime2 wrote: post #115

> The economics never worked either. An average Tesla Solar Roof costs approximately $106,000 before incentives, compared to roughly $60,000 for a traditional roof replacement plus conventional solar panels — a $46,000 premium. The payback period stretches to 15-25 years, compared to 7-12 years for traditional panels. Yikes that’s a lot of money. For most people buying solar, I think payback period is probably the bi…

In my opinion, the Tesla Solar Roof really appealed to people who wanted good looks. They probably already have their “forever” homes and are not thinking of moving at all. It is more about the emotional attachment to this part of your home than its functional aspects. You can buy a $100 dining table from IKEA or you can buy a $1,000 dining table from Pottery Barn or you can buy a custom $5,000 dining table made from…

But we're talking about a utility here. If someone just wants to own fashionable things there are better ways to do that.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#169

Post by brikym »

danans wrote: post #22
IneffablePigeon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle ground is integrated solar panels, where you have normal sized panels but they are flush with the rest of the roof and there are no tiles underneath them. There are normal tiles surrounding the panels. This is the style I tend to see now for new builds, but it’s more expensive than just layering on the panels if your roof is already in good shape.

> The middle ground is integrated solar panels, where you have normal sized panels but they are flush with the rest of the roof and there are no tiles underneath them Flush with the rest of the roof seems like a mistake. What if you need/want to replace them with a different sized panel?

More importantly solar works more efficiently when the panels are cooler. There is a reason most installs have a chunky air gap underneath.

Re: Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

#170

Post by toast0 »

xnx wrote: post #164
toast0 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a consultant coming over on tuesday to take measurements and give a more solid quote for installation. We'll see. But I have an outbuilding with a large two plane roof and the south facing plane has no penetrations and is pretty much unshaded. Our utility rates have pretty much doubled over the last three years, and there's another ~30% increase scheduled over the next three years. Said roof is coming up on…

Good plan. Sounds like you're going into it with the right approach. Many homeowners accept the ROI calculation from the salesperson and don't account for opportunity cost and other factors.

I did my NPV calculation with probably the wrong interest rate, but I'm also looking at the 10 year NPV of 80% of our kWh charges as my guide (including the published rate increases).

If it maths with that, great. If not, but it's close, we'll look again when we need to do the roof. Utility prices are rising, panel prices are dropping, it'll probably make sense eventually... Installer costs are going up too though.

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