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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

#341

Post by quickthrowman »

formerly_proven wrote: post #235
decimalenough wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just solar panels, it's a roof replacement and solar panels. In high COL areas, the roof alone would likely cost you $10k+ these days.

10k for a SFH roof seems extraordinarily cheap to me for any COL area. I would expect around 50k-60k for a 1000 sq ft roof (not US).

$50-60 sq ft is probably 3x too high.

A bundle of shingles is $50, 3 bundles to cover 100 sq ft is $1.50 sq ft in materials. Figure $1.50/sq ft to demo and dispose of the old roof shingles.

Materials and demo comes out to $3,000, figure $500 for tools and nails, mark it up to $4,500-5,000

Probably (4) people can knock out a 1000sq ft roof in an 8 hour day, call it 40 hours of labor for demo and install.

Surely the labor cost and markup is not $1,000 an hour, that’s what it would have to be for a 1000 sq ft roof to cost $50-60k. $125/hr for 40 hours is $5,000.00

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

#342

Post by tln »

pbmonster wrote: post #214
tln wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you need fire setbacks? I didn't think full roof racks were possible

Building codes on that are going to vary locally. They are doable in most of Switzerland if you plan for it: no sky lights, no chimney (there's setbacks and fire codes for those), ect.

I thought the IFC International Fire Codes were a bit more ubiquitous than they are. Apparently whole roof is possible in a few EU countries. Probably not a good idea for the stick-built houses prevalent in US though

Thanks for sharing

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

#343

Post by dangus »

pjc50 wrote: post #301
dangus wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is now out of the top 10 list for EV sales in China as a brand. The Model 3 is not one of the top 5 selling EVs in Europe. Everything in the top 3 has a hatch. Sedans are more popular in the American market but they’re also a dying segment compared to SUVs, while Europe always preferred vehicles with hatchbacks for space efficiency and practicality. Volkswagen Group EVs outsell Tesla in Europe. The Skoda Elroq…

Europe now has lots of fairly-local EV options: VW (inc Cupra and Skoda), Renault, even Stellantis. Despite their poor rep they make a lot of cars: Vauxhall/Opel, Fiat etc. UK now has a significant Chinese presence: Omoda, Jaecoo (Chery), and especially BYD.

This is essentially Tesla’s looming biggest problem: they just don’t compete in enough model segments.

No tiny city car hatchback for volume in Europe, no three row SUV for American families, no commercial delivery vehicles (the ideal EV use case), no subcompact SUV, and their pickup truck is way more of a failure than it should have been.

The Cybertruck should have just been called tho Model T, be made to look normal/big manly grill like a Silverado, and have ads for it plastered all over NFL games. Tesla should have easily been able to sell 100,000 units per year in North America but they designed the thing without considering demographic research at all. (Example: many families use the 6 seat configuration of the F-150 to fit the whole family in in lieu of a minivan).

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

#344

Post by oliwarner »

panick21_ wrote: post #268
oliwarner wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They thought it would work That's the problem though. Thinking your product will get by on looks when it's clearly outcompeted on performance, price, availability and longevity. That's not just optimism, it's delusion.

I don't think it was clear that it would be out compete on price or performance. If you compare roof + solor to solar roof, the idea was that eventually it would compete with doing both separately. I'm also not sure if its actually worse on longevity.

It seems fairly clear if you consider a 50-100 year roof (ours is 150 years, and it's only had membrane changes in that time) against a 25 year roof.

I'm sure the steel shingle will last a fair time but if the PV elements need replacing four times a century, that's not a non-trivial cost.

When my PV panels die, it's just £400 a panel, four hex bolts and some quick connectors to replace it. It's no contest.

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

#345

Post by cdmckay »

tapoxi wrote: post #339
ymolodtsov wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine if we create a separate company that invests in infrastructure and sells energy to willing buyers who don't have to deal with this. We could call it an energy company.

The difference is in motive. You want to have a cheap energy bill, the energy company wants to make a profit that grows every quarter. Those two goals are eternally at odds.

We could make it so profit wasn’t the prime motivator, instead it’s main motive would be to provide a public good. We would call it a public utility.

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

#346

Post by idiotsecant »

itissid wrote: post #286
idiotsecant wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just built another roof on top of your roof. People generally limit the number of roofs to one, as they are expensive and important for keeping the outside out and the inside in. Residential roofs are more or less the worst place possible to put solar panels.

> People generally limit the number of roofs to one, as they are expensive and important for keeping the outside out and the inside in. What does this mean? And why is it the worst place to put solar panels? Is this and America only phenomenon, cause in India people are installing them like hot cakes on the roof. What’s different about roofs here?

American roofs are not built to mount anything but lightweight shingles, generally. They need to be designed for the load. Even if you do that, you now have a maintenance item that requires being on your room to perform. The correct place for solar panels is the many, many, many millions of square miles that don't have houses on them.

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

#347

Post by zdragnar »

womble2 wrote: post #319
zdragnar wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing apples to oranges, at least a bit. $60k for a roof plus solar is going to be for a larger US home compared to a UK home- probably in the 3000 sq ft range, unless it's a very steep roof with lots of dormers or corners. Also, the cost savings for the UK home are due to much higher energy prices- the cost savings would be much smaller in the US. With that said, Tesla's Solar Roof is definitely the gold…

OTOH solar is a lot less useful in the UK than in the US. The southern tip of the UK is north of all the major Canadian cities, in the depths of winter we get about 6 hours of daylight with the sun barely reaching 20 degrees above the horizon. The winter is also where most electricity usage is too, doubly so when you want to replace gas heating with a heat pump. No AC and summer daylight past 10pm means that resident…

Meh, I've had people come out to give me a quote for rooftop solar and they told me not to bother. Between the latitude (upper Midwest) and tree coverage shading parts of the roof throughout the day, it wouldn't pay off in a reasonable time line.

Mind you, that's with having AC, electric laundry dryer, a private well pump, septic heater and all sorts of other energy hogs trotting about the place throughout the year. I'm not exactly living an ascetic lifestyle myself.

Maybe if I paid the UK's electricity rates it'd be different though.

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

#348

Post by brikym »

gwd wrote: post #243
brikym wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it actually make sense financially vs investing in something else?

I mean, if your goal is to absolutely maximize the number in your bank account, no. But then there are other things you could be doing too -- you can do the math and cover all your nutritional needs for under $1 a day, by eating mostly potatoes. But most people prefer to spend 20x that much and have food that tastes decent. And a handful of people will spend 30-40x that to have really nice food. If you think about mo…

I don't get it. If it's cheaper to have a nice traditional slate/cedar roof and just buy my electricity from the grid then why would I want solar tiles? Just to tell my friends how I'm saving the planet? It's not like solar tiles have a monopoly on electricity or nice roofing materials.

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

#349

Post by [deleted] »

angry_octet wrote: post #277
freetime2 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not regurgitating anything. I'm looking at how much electricity my panels generate, and what percentage of it I use, and I can say definitively that it would not make financial sense for me if not for the feed-in tariff program that pays me a guaranteed rate for electricity I sell back to the grid. You can't just blindly say "PVs save you money". It matters very much how much sunlight you get, the orientation of…

Unless you have very cheap grid power / terrible sun / needlessly high installation costs, PV will be a winner. So Quebec is bad because electricity is absurdly cheap, and the only benefit is redundancy. California should be absurdly cheap but regulations are out of control. Germany also has insane regulatory burden and expensive labour but grid energy is even more expensive, double the US average. In very sunny plac…

[deleted]

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

#350

Post by freetime2 »

angry_octet wrote: post #277
freetime2 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not regurgitating anything. I'm looking at how much electricity my panels generate, and what percentage of it I use, and I can say definitively that it would not make financial sense for me if not for the feed-in tariff program that pays me a guaranteed rate for electricity I sell back to the grid. You can't just blindly say "PVs save you money". It matters very much how much sunlight you get, the orientation of…

Unless you have very cheap grid power / terrible sun / needlessly high installation costs, PV will be a winner. So Quebec is bad because electricity is absurdly cheap, and the only benefit is redundancy. California should be absurdly cheap but regulations are out of control. Germany also has insane regulatory burden and expensive labour but grid energy is even more expensive, double the US average. In very sunny plac…

Ok so you've backpedaled from "PVs always save you money" to "if it doesn't, it's because of politics".

The reality is not that simple. PVs are definitely the cheapest source of energy in a lot of places, which is why it is the fastest growing energy source in the world. But "cheapest in a lot of places" is not the same thing as "universally a winner in every scenario". Politics can be a complicating factor, but in other cases the math just doesn't work out due to plain old physics and economics.

I'm extremely optimistic about the future of solar. But I don't think it helps the argument to pretend that it's already a guaranteed win everywhere if not for foolish politicians. That's just swapping one oversimplification for another.

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