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> It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive. There is something absolutely astonishing about the fact that in America the way we have go about being eco-friendly is to give huge tax breaks to rich people to buy solar panels and electric vehicles. To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Really boggles the mind.
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Really? Isn't that how all successful technology starts off - highly priced, effectively experimental, but then becoming more and more available to the general public as the price goes down and production increases?
The trouble is that you're necessarily picking winners and losers in order to design the incentive scheme. It makes no sense to pay somebody $7500 to buy a new car to drive to work, but not to switch to cycling or telecommuting. In this case, it's not necessarily clear that this is a product that needs to happen. Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Were there a carbon tax, there'd…
Utility scale solar has met the same ardent opposition in land use decisionmaking fora as denser housing, including from 'environmental' organizations.
Some examples from around here:
https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-coun...
http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-...
https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/po...
https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-c...
https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/E...
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Cheaper than traditional roof plus solar .
> Cheaper than traditional roof plus solar. I find that really hard to believe. A new roof runs between 5-10k, and a 3kw solar system can be had for ~5k + labor. Even if they are including a power wall in that price it's still pretty steep. Edit: It looks like they are actually quoting a 10kw system with 3 power walls (~40kwH storage) included, which at that point sounds about right at $40k. Still far beyond the reac…
Amortized over 30 years, it's barely over $110 per month and for most homes would bring the electric bill to near zero.
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Incentiving rich people to buy expansive tech (and still at lost for the riches) help the technologies to ride the cost curve and bring it to the masses.
that can't be true as rich people are by definition a small minority. why not just give the subsidies directly to the companies
I think a major challenge that is yet to be addressed is the fact that solar panels lose their efficiency over time [1] [2]. Seems like you're looking at 80% of rated efficiency after 20 years - and I'm unsure this includes failures. In the UK a 50+ year old roof is very common - most people expect a house to outlast them without anything but minor repairs. If I were building a house I would want something where it's…
UK roofs are made and ceramic and slate. US roofs are made of asphalt. Mostly because asphalt is inexpensive (particularly due to economies of scale/lack of them on ceramic). Ceramic lasts a lifetime, asphalt can be taken out by one bad hail storm. UK homes are made of brick. US homes are made of fiberboard and inexpensive woods. There's a reason why UK homes have lasted over one hundred years, and most US homes won'…
That's wild a claim. I live in a 115 year old US house made of "inexpensive" wood and it's doing just fine, like the rest of the neighborhood.
> It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive. There is something absolutely astonishing about the fact that in America the way we have go about being eco-friendly is to give huge tax breaks to rich people to buy solar panels and electric vehicles. To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Really boggles the mind.
> It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive. There is something absolutely astonishing about the fact that in America the way we have go about being eco-friendly is to give huge tax breaks to rich people to buy solar panels and electric vehicles. To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Really boggles the mind.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does your roof generate electricity though? A solar roof is a roof + solar panels.
It's not going to cost 34k to install solar panels on his roof. Tesla's claim seems disengenous at best.
> It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive. There is something absolutely astonishing about the fact that in America the way we have go about being eco-friendly is to give huge tax breaks to rich people to buy solar panels and electric vehicles. To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Really boggles the mind.
Initiatives that make carbon emissions more expensive are really unpopular. Direct government investment is "picking winners" or "socialism" (?).