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Yikes. I just signed a contract for a new roof here last month, it's going to cost about $12k. Just did the estimate for the Tesla Solar roof... $80,300, so $87

Yikes. I just signed a contract for a new roof here last month, it's going to cost about $12k. Just did the estimate for the Tesla Solar roof... $80,300, so $87k if I want the battery too. I can barely afford the $12 right now, the $80 is just so far over it's not even close, even with how much I save over the years in electricity. That being said, I love these things, so hoping it gets cheaper in the coming years.

SEJeff 9y ago
12k for asphalt shingles, or slate / terracotta / etc? They're going to be targetting people who are looking for slate or terracotta aka more expensive than asphalt shingles like most of us have. Prices likely will come down with more volume. We can hope at least!
nixarn 9y ago
Also typicallt the whole roof wouldn't have solarpanels. Only the side in the sun. And the dummy shingles will presumably be alot cheaper.
- Jtsummers 9y ago
  ~$42 versus ~$11 per square foot (solar vs dummy tiles) per the Ars article. So depending on the amount of solar coverage you want, can get, need, you can manipulate the price a bit.
aasarava 9y ago
You got a $12K quote for tile? How long is the warranty? Remember that the 80K quote includes solar, so you'd have to add a standard solar install of the same KW capacity to your initial quote to really compare apples to apples. You'll probably still pay a premium to go with Tesla, but the no-profile solar integration and lifetime warranty really look attractive. Some people are probably willing to pay for it, similar to people willing to pay a premium for the cars.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  It's totally fair to just balk at the price. Someone that doesn't install solar can sell the home without worrying about recovering that cost.
- heisenbit 9y ago
  Considering how long Tesla has been in existence and how financially leveraged Tesla is I would take discount warranty value (lifetime of house or infinity whatever comes first). Can't project finances much more than 10 years max. At the moment cost of capital is low but that may well change in that time-frame. Things have to make sense in a decade or so also considering that this new technology that is obsoleted by incremental innovation.
  - 65827 9y ago
    Yeah there's a pretty legitimate possibility of Tesla/SolarCity collapsing if their stock had a long bad run, don't think your warranty is worth much at the back of the line in bankruptcy court.
  - ProAm 9y ago
    It's definitely the lifetime of Tesla and not your house, roof, or owner.
- Fezzik 9y ago
  It's not really a lifetime warranty though. If you click through to the Tesla purchasing page, there is (only) a 30 years Power Warranty and Weatherization Warranty... which in my mind renders calling it a lifetime warranty sort of silly, as the purpose of the shingles (power generation) is not covered by the lifetime portion of the warranty. 30 years still seems like a significant warranty for a product like this though.
  - vkou 9y ago
    The odds that Tesla will be around and willing to honor their warranty 25 years from now are also nowhere near 100%. Also, if you read the fine print, you will notice that the warranty will not cover the most frequent cause of roof problems - leaks in the seams. The same can be said for your local fly-by-night roofer, but it sounds like you can buy two roofs for the price of a SolarRoof. Also, another thing to be concerned about is whether or not you're going to be stuck in the middle of a pass-the-blame around football match between Tesla, and their subcontractors. (I guarantee you that the people installing your roof will not be Tesla employees.) In roofs, installation mistakes can cost you dearly - they are the primary cause of roof problems.
SamBam 9y ago
Huh, I don't know much about roof costs, but which bar was incorrect in their price chart for you: the asphalt or the solar tiles? From their chart, the solar tiles (installed) should only be about twice as much as asphalt.
- dangrossman 9y ago
  That's a very misleading chart. (1) The solar tiles aren't actually on the chart. If they were, they'd have to extend the scale more than twice as wide as what's shown, out to past $40 per square foot based on their calculator. (2) The bar that is on the chart is for their "non-solar" tiles, plain glass squares. That's the one that's twice as long as the bar for asphalt tiles. The solar glass tiles are actually more like 10x the cost of asphalt shingles, including installation.
erroneousfunk 9y ago
Yeah, I balked at first, but it looks like mine (~1400 sqft 2 story house), would cost $30k, and there's a lifetime warranty on the roof. I might consider it in the long term future, but would definitely want to give it a few years and see how things pan out first. This is one of those things that I wouldn't want to be an early adopter for.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Did you take into account the 30% federal tax credit on that 30k? EDIT: That's sort of the kicker. A regular roof does not get a 30% federal tax credit (plus possible state incentives), nor does it produce power for 30+ years, nor does it have a lifetime warranty. If you can obtain low cost financing, you almost always come out ahead.
  - fictioncircle 9y ago
    > EDIT: That's sort of the kicker. A regular roof does not get a 30% federal tax credit (plus possible state incentives), nor does it produce power for 30+ years, nor does it have a lifetime warranty. If you can obtain low cost financing, you almost always come out ahead. Maximizing retirement savings is still likely more cost effective than this roof for most people and I doubt many people in the US are putting away $24k/year. The only way I'd see this is as viable is below inflation interest and people showing they can sell the houses for the full value of the Tesla roof.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - mathgeek 9y ago
    > Did you take into account the 30% federal tax credit on that 30k? If I understand the tax credit correctly, it's only available if you're paying that much in taxes otherwise. For a $60k roof, you have to already be paying $18k in taxes to take full advantage of the credit. That's an important detail for some.
hourislate 9y ago
I am not sure there are a lot of folks who will spend 70k on a roof. Even if it reduces or eliminates their electricity costs. For this to succeed it is going to have to cost the home owner at least what a shingled roof would cost with the additional cost of the power-wall and the infrastructure that is required to to set that up. I can understand paying a slight premium but 70k? You would be better off using a high performance insulation like spray foam, 3 pane windows, and even installing a Geo Thermal System (around 20-25k) instead of this solar roof.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
timtadh 9y ago
Where I live $80k is a significant portion of the cost of most houses. The price will be a significant barrier to entry for houses outside of hot real estate markets.
- sndean 9y ago
  Yeah, my brother just bought a pretty large house for $100k, but I guess people in rural North Carolina aren't the target buyer of solar roofs anyway. I wonder on what price home would a $80k roof make sense? >$800k?
  - fictioncircle 9y ago
    That sounds about right to me. A roof that exceeds 10% of the purchase price is likely to push the house outside of the price range of buyers in the target market. I know a friend of mine (who has a solar system, not quite the same) but basically got almost nothing for it. The aesthetics of a "Solar Roof" is better but I don't see it raising the value of the house by more than 10%. I used their calculator using the estimates when I had my roof done last time, and it is just not economically feasible. $60k roof vs. $6k roof. Net of $12k savings over 30 years. $60k over 30 years (adjusting for inflation in conservative investments) is easily going to hit $180k.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    I have a $2M house, and I've been bitching and moaning for a year that a new roof cost us $20k.
- jrnichols 9y ago
  I dunno, I'm in the Dallas/Ft Worth area, and we have abundant sunshine and I think the price is still going to be a barrier. But like others have said... there are plenty with a lot more money than I have which will jump at this. I'm ok with that. The more wealthy folks that install these and take their load off the grid, the better.
goshx 9y ago
While doing the calculations I read "Cost of Powerball ticket" instead of "Cost of Powerwall battery"... laughed loud as it would be useful to help pay it off.
atourgates 9y ago
I don't really see the selling point, or value here. Tesla's calculator estimates $40,500 for a roof that generates half our power needs, and should provide $20,400 worth of energy over 30-years. Add in a PowerWall and federal tax credit, and I'm still losing $15,400 over 30-years. If I put that same $40,000 in an index fund that got the stock market's historical 7% average, and waited 30 years, I'd have $308,000. To put it in another perspective, the last estimates I got for a solar system that covered 100% of our average power needs came in at $32,000 installed, before the same $11K tax credit that Tesla includes in their calculations. So, I could pay under $20,000 for a "traditional" solar system that covered 100% of our energy bills, or $40,000 for a Tesla solar roof that covered 50% of our energy bills. That's quite literally half the value, at twice the price. If I put in a traditional solar system tomorrow, it would pay for itself in year 9. If I put in a Tesla solar roof tomorrow, I'd still be out $15K at year 30.
- tzs 9y ago
  > Tesla's calculator estimates $40,500 for a roof that generates half our power needs, and should provide $20,400 worth of energy over 30-years. This depends quite strongly on where you are. Your numbers are very close to the ones I get if I use my correct address, which is in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. If I keep everything the same except the address, changing that to one in Merced, California, then it says I'd get $75000 worth of energy over 30 years. PS: it looks like they try to use the address for more than just finding the location in order to estimate how much sun is available. I tried an address that I had lived at in Pasadena, California, and it did not ask me for the house size and number of floors. Instead, it did the calculation using about 6000 sq ft, which is about the size of the apartment building that is at that address. For my Seattle-area and Merced addresses, it did ask me for the house information.
  - pyoung 9y ago
    They are using Google's Project Sunroof[1] to do the modeling. The tool uses satellite images of your roof to create the estimates, and accounts for orientation, shading from trees, etc... [1] https://www.google.com/get/sunroof https://www.google.com/get/sunroof
ricardobeat 9y ago
How on earth did you hit 80k? Using the calculator, the roof for a two-story 3000sqft home comes down to $50-60k, with a net gain of $5k. If your house is any larger than that, $80k is pocket change.
- majormajor 9y ago
  > Using the calculator, the roof for a two-story 3000sqft home comes down to $50-60k, with a net gain of $5k. If your house is any larger than that $80k is pocket change. That's hardly pocket change in most of the country, where you can get a lot more sqft/$ (and potentially in a bigger, 1-story footprint) than on the west coast.
- sbov 9y ago
  > two-story Not everyone has a two story house. My parents live in a single story 2k square foot home and tesla estimates the cost to be $69k. I live in a 2 story house with more groundfloor space than 2nd story, and it estimates the cost at $60k
- mathgeek 9y ago
  I own a two-story, 3000 sq.ft. house, budgeted to the usual percentage of total income. I assure you that $80k is not pocket change (because I didn't pay the down payment with pocket change, and even that wasn't $80k).
phonon 9y ago
Doesn't the Tesla roof last substantially longer? Like maybe 2-3 times as long as asphalt ?
- waynecochran 9y ago
  From the description: Solar Roof is the most durable roof available and the glass itself will come with a warranty for the lifetime of your house, or infinity, whichever comes first.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    > Solar Roof is the most durable roof available and the glass itself will come with a warranty for the lifetime of your house, or infinity, whichever comes first.... ... Or 30 years. You know, whichever comes first.
greglindahl 9y ago
This new roof has always been pitched as a product competing with new premium roofs. It doesn't sound like that's the kind of roof you're buying. Every thread about Tesla cars has a subthread about how irrelevant they are because they cost too much for some car buyers. Now we can look forward to every thread about Tesla roofs having a subthread about the initial product not being price-competitive for low-end roof buyers.
Retric 9y ago
It depends on your roof orientation and your location so ROI has a huge range. For example if you don't have a southern facing roof then this is going to be a terrible investment. However, this is also a home improvement which means a low interest loan which has many tax advantages, remember you pay your electric bill with after tax money but you pay interest on a home loan with pre tax money. Further electricity costs increase with inflation, so your out of pocket investment may be tiny while the value of electricity generated is increasing.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  South facing roofs aren't essential to solar. East-West layouts can spread the energy production out through the day and work out better overall depending on various factors such as how much you make from selling excess to the grid.
  - Retric 9y ago
    These are tiles that sit flush with your roof, east west roofs act like zero tilt panels which provide less power everywhere in the US and thus lower efficiency. Granted if it's cheap enough that's not a deal breaker, but it's always going to impact ROI.
dbecker 9y ago
The $80k roof is especially scary if you live in an area with any type of natural disaster risk. The area I live in just had a huge hail storm. Most roofs in our neighborhood will require repairs. That's a bummer with asphalt shingles, but it would be a lot worse with an $80k roof. Most people won't think about those risks, but over the time period you need to consider for a roof, it's a big risk in most places.
- j2bax 9y ago
  Tesla claims their shingles are a lot more resilient than standard roofing material...
  - vacri 9y ago
    They say the glass is warrantied for the lifetime of the house, but it will be interesting to see what exclusions are in that warranty.
    - prewett 9y ago
      According to the ordering website where it says "30 years", I'd say the exclusion of t > 30 is rather extensive...
- tren 9y ago
  Elon posted a huge hail cannonball hitting a roof tile: https://www.instagram.com/p/BT7HVS3AZ4q/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BT7HVS3AZ4q/. It looks pretty resilient.
reboog711 9y ago
There is a button on the calculator to change your settings. It sized my roof at more than 2x the square footage of my house. It also estimated my monthly electric bill at 4x what I pay on a monthly basis. Changing those numbers put them to something closer to a new roof; and is definitely competitive with putting on a new roof and then paying for a solar panel installation.
ed_balls 9y ago
Take into account the fact that Model 3 + battery pack + roof will cost 80k-100k in 10 years. In France electricity cost almost double and fuel is 50% more expensive.
awkwardtortoise 9y ago
It's all flash and no substance. Elon Musk is a great salesman and marketer. I'll give him that. But just like their cars, this roof is for the wealthy people who want to look cool and earn some liberal points. It makes no financial sense for the vast majority of people. > That being said, I love these things, so hoping it gets cheaper in the coming years. Yep. Perhaps in the future.
- knz 9y ago
  > But just like their cars, this roof is for the wealthy people who want to look cool and earn some liberal points. What does political affiliation have to do with this? People being excited about new and innovative technologies like electric cars, space travel, and solar roofs is great news for people reading a site like Hacker News - I don't think it would be out of line to suggest most new technology is marketed towards those with the disposable income to purchase it. There is no need to make this into a "stupid liberals just trying to score points" issue.
  - awkwardtortoise 9y ago
    > What does political affiliation have to do with this? Well liberals love to pretend they are environmentally "conscious" while conservatives are "drill baby drill"? Right? Maybe I should have written fake california liberals. > People being excited about new and innovative technologies like electric cars, space travel, and solar roofs is great news for people reading a site like Hacker News I love innovative stuff. Solar roof isn't innovative. > There is no need to make this into a "stupid liberals just trying to score points" issue. I wasn't trying to score points. I was just being honest and offering my opinion. I'm fairly liberal myself...

SEJeff 9y ago

12k for asphalt shingles, or slate / terracotta / etc? They're going to be targetting people who are looking for slate or terracotta aka more expensive than asphalt shingles like most of us have. Prices likely will come down with more volume. We can hope at least!

nixarn 9y ago

Also typicallt the whole roof wouldn't have solarpanels. Only the side in the sun. And the dummy shingles will presumably be alot cheaper.

Jtsummers 9y ago
~$42 versus ~$11 per square foot (solar vs dummy tiles) per the Ars article. So depending on the amount of solar coverage you want, can get, need, you can manipulate the price a bit.

aasarava 9y ago

You got a $12K quote for tile? How long is the warranty? Remember that the 80K quote includes solar, so you'd have to add a standard solar install of the same KW capacity to your initial quote to really compare apples to apples. You'll probably still pay a premium to go with Tesla, but the no-profile solar integration and lifetime warranty really look attractive. Some people are probably willing to pay for it, similar to people willing to pay a premium for the cars.

maxerickson 9y ago
It's totally fair to just balk at the price. Someone that doesn't install solar can sell the home without worrying about recovering that cost.
heisenbit 9y ago
Considering how long Tesla has been in existence and how financially leveraged Tesla is I would take discount warranty value (lifetime of house or infinity whatever comes first). Can't project finances much more than 10 years max. At the moment cost of capital is low but that may well change in that time-frame. Things have to make sense in a decade or so also considering that this new technology that is obsoleted by incremental innovation.
- 65827 9y ago
  Yeah there's a pretty legitimate possibility of Tesla/SolarCity collapsing if their stock had a long bad run, don't think your warranty is worth much at the back of the line in bankruptcy court.
- ProAm 9y ago
  It's definitely the lifetime of Tesla and not your house, roof, or owner.
Fezzik 9y ago
It's not really a lifetime warranty though. If you click through to the Tesla purchasing page, there is (only) a 30 years Power Warranty and Weatherization Warranty... which in my mind renders calling it a lifetime warranty sort of silly, as the purpose of the shingles (power generation) is not covered by the lifetime portion of the warranty. 30 years still seems like a significant warranty for a product like this though.
- vkou 9y ago
  The odds that Tesla will be around and willing to honor their warranty 25 years from now are also nowhere near 100%. Also, if you read the fine print, you will notice that the warranty will not cover the most frequent cause of roof problems - leaks in the seams. The same can be said for your local fly-by-night roofer, but it sounds like you can buy two roofs for the price of a SolarRoof. Also, another thing to be concerned about is whether or not you're going to be stuck in the middle of a pass-the-blame around football match between Tesla, and their subcontractors. (I guarantee you that the people installing your roof will not be Tesla employees.) In roofs, installation mistakes can cost you dearly - they are the primary cause of roof problems.

SamBam 9y ago

Huh, I don't know much about roof costs, but which bar was incorrect in their price chart for you: the asphalt or the solar tiles? From their chart, the solar tiles (installed) should only be about twice as much as asphalt.

dangrossman 9y ago
That's a very misleading chart. (1) The solar tiles aren't actually on the chart. If they were, they'd have to extend the scale more than twice as wide as what's shown, out to past $40 per square foot based on their calculator. (2) The bar that is on the chart is for their "non-solar" tiles, plain glass squares. That's the one that's twice as long as the bar for asphalt tiles. The solar glass tiles are actually more like 10x the cost of asphalt shingles, including installation.

erroneousfunk 9y ago

Yeah, I balked at first, but it looks like mine (~1400 sqft 2 story house), would cost $30k, and there's a lifetime warranty on the roof. I might consider it in the long term future, but would definitely want to give it a few years and see how things pan out first. This is one of those things that I wouldn't want to be an early adopter for.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Did you take into account the 30% federal tax credit on that 30k? EDIT: That's sort of the kicker. A regular roof does not get a 30% federal tax credit (plus possible state incentives), nor does it produce power for 30+ years, nor does it have a lifetime warranty. If you can obtain low cost financing, you almost always come out ahead.
- fictioncircle 9y ago
  > EDIT: That's sort of the kicker. A regular roof does not get a 30% federal tax credit (plus possible state incentives), nor does it produce power for 30+ years, nor does it have a lifetime warranty. If you can obtain low cost financing, you almost always come out ahead. Maximizing retirement savings is still likely more cost effective than this roof for most people and I doubt many people in the US are putting away $24k/year. The only way I'd see this is as viable is below inflation interest and people showing they can sell the houses for the full value of the Tesla roof.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- mathgeek 9y ago
  > Did you take into account the 30% federal tax credit on that 30k? If I understand the tax credit correctly, it's only available if you're paying that much in taxes otherwise. For a $60k roof, you have to already be paying $18k in taxes to take full advantage of the credit. That's an important detail for some.

hourislate 9y ago

I am not sure there are a lot of folks who will spend 70k on a roof. Even if it reduces or eliminates their electricity costs. For this to succeed it is going to have to cost the home owner at least what a shingled roof would cost with the additional cost of the power-wall and the infrastructure that is required to to set that up. I can understand paying a slight premium but 70k? You would be better off using a high performance insulation like spray foam, 3 pane windows, and even installing a Geo Thermal System (around 20-25k) instead of this solar roof.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

timtadh 9y ago

Where I live $80k is a significant portion of the cost of most houses. The price will be a significant barrier to entry for houses outside of hot real estate markets.

sndean 9y ago
Yeah, my brother just bought a pretty large house for $100k, but I guess people in rural North Carolina aren't the target buyer of solar roofs anyway. I wonder on what price home would a $80k roof make sense? >$800k?
- fictioncircle 9y ago
  That sounds about right to me. A roof that exceeds 10% of the purchase price is likely to push the house outside of the price range of buyers in the target market. I know a friend of mine (who has a solar system, not quite the same) but basically got almost nothing for it. The aesthetics of a "Solar Roof" is better but I don't see it raising the value of the house by more than 10%. I used their calculator using the estimates when I had my roof done last time, and it is just not economically feasible. $60k roof vs. $6k roof. Net of $12k savings over 30 years. $60k over 30 years (adjusting for inflation in conservative investments) is easily going to hit $180k.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  I have a $2M house, and I've been bitching and moaning for a year that a new roof cost us $20k.
jrnichols 9y ago
I dunno, I'm in the Dallas/Ft Worth area, and we have abundant sunshine and I think the price is still going to be a barrier. But like others have said... there are plenty with a lot more money than I have which will jump at this. I'm ok with that. The more wealthy folks that install these and take their load off the grid, the better.

goshx 9y ago

While doing the calculations I read "Cost of Powerball ticket" instead of "Cost of Powerwall battery"... laughed loud as it would be useful to help pay it off.

atourgates 9y ago

I don't really see the selling point, or value here. Tesla's calculator estimates $40,500 for a roof that generates half our power needs, and should provide $20,400 worth of energy over 30-years. Add in a PowerWall and federal tax credit, and I'm still losing $15,400 over 30-years. If I put that same $40,000 in an index fund that got the stock market's historical 7% average, and waited 30 years, I'd have $308,000. To put it in another perspective, the last estimates I got for a solar system that covered 100% of our average power needs came in at $32,000 installed, before the same $11K tax credit that Tesla includes in their calculations. So, I could pay under $20,000 for a "traditional" solar system that covered 100% of our energy bills, or $40,000 for a Tesla solar roof that covered 50% of our energy bills. That's quite literally half the value, at twice the price. If I put in a traditional solar system tomorrow, it would pay for itself in year 9. If I put in a Tesla solar roof tomorrow, I'd still be out $15K at year 30.

tzs 9y ago
> Tesla's calculator estimates $40,500 for a roof that generates half our power needs, and should provide $20,400 worth of energy over 30-years. This depends quite strongly on where you are. Your numbers are very close to the ones I get if I use my correct address, which is in the Puget Sound area of Washington State. If I keep everything the same except the address, changing that to one in Merced, California, then it says I'd get $75000 worth of energy over 30 years. PS: it looks like they try to use the address for more than just finding the location in order to estimate how much sun is available. I tried an address that I had lived at in Pasadena, California, and it did not ask me for the house size and number of floors. Instead, it did the calculation using about 6000 sq ft, which is about the size of the apartment building that is at that address. For my Seattle-area and Merced addresses, it did ask me for the house information.
- pyoung 9y ago
  They are using Google's Project Sunroof[1] to do the modeling. The tool uses satellite images of your roof to create the estimates, and accounts for orientation, shading from trees, etc... [1] https://www.google.com/get/sunroof https://www.google.com/get/sunroof

ricardobeat 9y ago

How on earth did you hit 80k? Using the calculator, the roof for a two-story 3000sqft home comes down to $50-60k, with a net gain of $5k. If your house is any larger than that, $80k is pocket change.

majormajor 9y ago
> Using the calculator, the roof for a two-story 3000sqft home comes down to $50-60k, with a net gain of $5k. If your house is any larger than that $80k is pocket change. That's hardly pocket change in most of the country, where you can get a lot more sqft/$ (and potentially in a bigger, 1-story footprint) than on the west coast.
sbov 9y ago
> two-story Not everyone has a two story house. My parents live in a single story 2k square foot home and tesla estimates the cost to be $69k. I live in a 2 story house with more groundfloor space than 2nd story, and it estimates the cost at $60k
mathgeek 9y ago
I own a two-story, 3000 sq.ft. house, budgeted to the usual percentage of total income. I assure you that $80k is not pocket change (because I didn't pay the down payment with pocket change, and even that wasn't $80k).

phonon 9y ago

Doesn't the Tesla roof last substantially longer? Like maybe 2-3 times as long as asphalt ?

waynecochran 9y ago
From the description: Solar Roof is the most durable roof available and the glass itself will come with a warranty for the lifetime of your house, or infinity, whichever comes first.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  > Solar Roof is the most durable roof available and the glass itself will come with a warranty for the lifetime of your house, or infinity, whichever comes first.... ... Or 30 years. You know, whichever comes first.

greglindahl 9y ago

This new roof has always been pitched as a product competing with new premium roofs. It doesn't sound like that's the kind of roof you're buying. Every thread about Tesla cars has a subthread about how irrelevant they are because they cost too much for some car buyers. Now we can look forward to every thread about Tesla roofs having a subthread about the initial product not being price-competitive for low-end roof buyers.

Retric 9y ago

It depends on your roof orientation and your location so ROI has a huge range. For example if you don't have a southern facing roof then this is going to be a terrible investment. However, this is also a home improvement which means a low interest loan which has many tax advantages, remember you pay your electric bill with after tax money but you pay interest on a home loan with pre tax money. Further electricity costs increase with inflation, so your out of pocket investment may be tiny while the value of electricity generated is increasing.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
South facing roofs aren't essential to solar. East-West layouts can spread the energy production out through the day and work out better overall depending on various factors such as how much you make from selling excess to the grid.
- Retric 9y ago
  These are tiles that sit flush with your roof, east west roofs act like zero tilt panels which provide less power everywhere in the US and thus lower efficiency. Granted if it's cheap enough that's not a deal breaker, but it's always going to impact ROI.

dbecker 9y ago

The $80k roof is especially scary if you live in an area with any type of natural disaster risk. The area I live in just had a huge hail storm. Most roofs in our neighborhood will require repairs. That's a bummer with asphalt shingles, but it would be a lot worse with an $80k roof. Most people won't think about those risks, but over the time period you need to consider for a roof, it's a big risk in most places.

j2bax 9y ago
Tesla claims their shingles are a lot more resilient than standard roofing material...
- vacri 9y ago
  They say the glass is warrantied for the lifetime of the house, but it will be interesting to see what exclusions are in that warranty.
  - prewett 9y ago
    According to the ordering website where it says "30 years", I'd say the exclusion of t > 30 is rather extensive...
tren 9y ago
Elon posted a huge hail cannonball hitting a roof tile: https://www.instagram.com/p/BT7HVS3AZ4q/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BT7HVS3AZ4q/. It looks pretty resilient.

reboog711 9y ago

There is a button on the calculator to change your settings. It sized my roof at more than 2x the square footage of my house. It also estimated my monthly electric bill at 4x what I pay on a monthly basis. Changing those numbers put them to something closer to a new roof; and is definitely competitive with putting on a new roof and then paying for a solar panel installation.

ed_balls 9y ago

Take into account the fact that Model 3 + battery pack + roof will cost 80k-100k in 10 years. In France electricity cost almost double and fuel is 50% more expensive.

awkwardtortoise 9y ago

It's all flash and no substance. Elon Musk is a great salesman and marketer. I'll give him that. But just like their cars, this roof is for the wealthy people who want to look cool and earn some liberal points. It makes no financial sense for the vast majority of people. > That being said, I love these things, so hoping it gets cheaper in the coming years. Yep. Perhaps in the future.

knz 9y ago
> But just like their cars, this roof is for the wealthy people who want to look cool and earn some liberal points. What does political affiliation have to do with this? People being excited about new and innovative technologies like electric cars, space travel, and solar roofs is great news for people reading a site like Hacker News - I don't think it would be out of line to suggest most new technology is marketed towards those with the disposable income to purchase it. There is no need to make this into a "stupid liberals just trying to score points" issue.
- awkwardtortoise 9y ago
  > What does political affiliation have to do with this? Well liberals love to pretend they are environmentally "conscious" while conservatives are "drill baby drill"? Right? Maybe I should have written fake california liberals. > People being excited about new and innovative technologies like electric cars, space travel, and solar roofs is great news for people reading a site like Hacker News I love innovative stuff. Solar roof isn't innovative. > There is no need to make this into a "stupid liberals just trying to score points" issue. I wasn't trying to score points. I was just being honest and offering my opinion. I'm fairly liberal myself...