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Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels
- ospray 5mo agoWhen they rolled out the product with tiny tiles I always thought musk was being to ambitious. The smaller the tiles the harder a solar roof gets.
- hleszek 5mo agoWhy are tiles small BTW? Could we use tiles as big as normal solar panels?
- torginus 5mo agoMy guess would be they are the same size as shingle strips, to make it easier to work with for regular installers rather than specialists. These things carry a lot of current though, so I would certainly not trust anyone without proper tools and training to put them on a roof.
- winfredJa 5mo agoI’m pretty sure solar roof was introduced as a way to pump stock when Tesla was doing poor financially
- vasco 5mo agoAnd to misdirect the acquisition of Solar City, famous for being run by Elons cousins to basically pocket all the tax credits, but which was not going well.
- Veserv 5mo agoNah, Elon Musk faked the demo [1] so he could defraud Tesla investors into bailing out his cousins. [1] https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-the-solar-roof-tile-fraud/ https://mansionengineer.com/2018/08/10/elon-musk-tesla-and-t...
- echelon_musk 5mo ago> Musk unveiled on October 28 at an event at Universal Studios’ back lot in Los Angeles, on an old residential set used in Desperate Housewives > There’s a reason that they announced the idea on a fake block in a fake neighborhood with fake houses! Interesting read.
- upofadown 5mo agoThe Steel Pulse idea actually sounds sort of possible...
- peterisza 5mo agoI think it was a genuine attempt but they failed to find a simple enough solution.
- moffkalast 5mo agoInvisible solar is a genuine use case in areas with shitty power tripping HOAs, but even regular solar takes a decade to break even, so if you sell something like that at inflated Tesla level prices then they simply never will and there is no reason to buy them in the first place.
- peterisza 5mo agoWhat is a HOAs?
- gabrielsroka 5mo agoHomeowners' associations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association
- hvb2 5mo agoThat's where regulation comes in. California for example made it almost impossible for a HOA to block. You're not allowed to add more than $1K to the project with your 'requirements'
- cianmm 5mo agoMy solar install took about 4.5 years to break even, which I understand is maybe a bit below average for where I live (Ireland).
- rgblambda 5mo agoAlthough isn't there an Irish government grant to help cover the cost of the panel + installation? That would make comparing break even times across countries quite difficult.
- habitue 5mo agoI'm no Musk fanboy but I think this kind of maximally cynical take is tiresome. They thought it would work, they expended significant engineering effort and money making it real and producing it and selling it to customers. The simplest explanation is that they did all that and the market didn't want it. The economics of traditional panels outweighed the aesthetic advantages of tiles and they're pivoting. No conspiracy or fraud need be invoked.
- xingped 5mo agoYou're not entirely wrong on it being a maximally cynical take, but I think it depends on where the idea originated. Yes, they expended a lot on engineering to make it real, but you can do that with any idea. I think what matters was if it was a feasible idea put forth from a reasonable source or if it was another grand delusion from Musk that everyone just had to make as real as possible despite their own misgivings on the idea.
- queenkjuul 5mo agoImo basically this, the attempt to make it work is downstream of musk deciding it had to be attempted. Musk can decide to spend money on a project whether or not it's genuine or feasible. This seems a clear cut case of musk designing a bad product and engineers doing their best to implement it despite the nonsensical constraints
- alfiedotwtf 5mo agoOf course the market wanted it. I wanted it. My friends wanted it. But we couldn’t buy it because it was vapourware ! From this to self-driving cars in 2 years to tunnels that will change public transport… maybe Musk should prototype and see what’s actually possible before telling the market. I mean come on - it’s borderline fraud in order to pump stocks - there’s got to be stockholders that are forming class actions as we speak
- SXX 5mo agoBoth self driving craze and car tunnel madness is only possible at all because how car centric US mindset is. If you even try to suggest that people could instead use good public transport and pedestrian infrastructure they would look at you like you are some sort of crazy. Musk just takes car centric society pipe dreams and sell it back to them. Like OMG you transiting to work and can safely stay in your phone 99% of time. In other countries this called train or a bus. Solved in London with 1863 tech.
- ekjhgkejhgk 5mo agoEnron Musk.
- sieabahlpark 5mo ago[dead]
- PowerElectronix 5mo agoDidn't they "bail out" solar roof when tesla started making money?
- epolanski 5mo agoOr the 2019 Roadster scam to inject liquidity through preorders.
- sidcool 5mo agoYep. Fred Lambert, the usual suspect.
- bartvk 5mo agoHe is very critical of Elon Musk, but I never caught him writing something false.
- jfoster 5mo agoIf you read his articles over the years you would continually think that Tesla should go out of business in the near future, yet they never do. He might not specifically lie, but puts such a negative spin on anything Elon-related that the overall result is essentially a lie.
- sidcool 5mo agoHe is extremely negative about Tesla, consistently. He's careful not to open himself to lawsuit with plausible deniability. But he borderline lies. I won't be surprised if he's on the payroll of legacy auto
- general1465 5mo agoI don't think he is on payroll, but he was promised Tesla Roadster, when it did not materialize he went on a vengeful crusade. I don't blame the guy, I would do the same.
- sidcool 5mo agoIs that legit?
- general1465 5mo agoYeah, he was a big Tesla shill, after he got scammed from the Roadster, he did 180 and started pointing everything wrong with Tesla https://www.thedrive.com/news/24025/electreks-editor-in-chief-publisher-both-scoring-250000-tesla-roadsters-for-free-by-gaming-referral-program https://www.thedrive.com/news/24025/electreks-editor-in-chie...
- Freedom2 5mo agoAs someone who owns a Solar Roof, this news is disappointing. Many of my friends have said it's the best roof they've ever seen, and I even sometimes get compliments from people who drive past.
- moralestapia 5mo agoIs it enough to get you off-the-grid?
- haraldooo 5mo agohttps://youtu.be/UJeSWbR6W04?is=7zjKewd_mhUFEX1H https://youtu.be/UJeSWbR6W04?is=7zjKewd_mhUFEX1H - mkbhd has a video about it. Not fully off grid, if I remember correctly but generates pretty much all electricity he needs.
- haberdasher 5mo ago"the guy at the store said i was the only one who could pull it off"
- white_dragon88 5mo ago[dead]
- asdff 5mo agoSeems like from the comments in this thread there are other companies offering similar roofs now at least.
- transfire 5mo agoSad. A great idea ruined by poor business practices.
- _fizz_buzz_ 5mo agoI think it had more to do with the reality of the market. Solar panels have become incredibly cheap and that's because they are mass produced and standardized. Everything in the manufacturing process has been optimized. Now it is technically of course possible to make them other form factors, but artisinal solar panels are simply so much more expensive and cannot compete in any meaningful way with regular panels.
- angry_octet 5mo agoIt was a bad idea from the beginning, technically and economically it sucked, the only possible utility was areas with strict heritage constraints which forbade normal rooftop PV.
- rsynnott 5mo agoA bad idea ruined by poor business practices. Like, it's very hard to see how it could ever compete economically with normal solar panels.
- tensor 5mo agoWhat a ridiculous statement. People get all sorts of roofs with all sorts of trade offs. Looks is absolutely one of them. Also, any product that gets popular eventually gets highly optimized manufacturing pipelines bringing the cost down. It doesn't need to compete with normal panels on only one metric. People will accept longer payoff times for aesthetics or durability if the ratio is right. Also, who really cares about Tesla at this point? Other companies are now producing these panels. Like everything Musk, it died because of his poor business practices and his politics. The only thing he seems to excel at these days is extracting government money.
- unsnap_biceps 5mo agoDid any other manufacturers build their own version? It seems like the right long term idea but the lack of other players seems to indicate there's some underlying issue that isn't solved yet.
- para_parolu 5mo agoI did consider but there are 2 issues. 1. Efficiency. Not all roof parts can be exposed to sun. You overpay 2. You need to time it with roof change
- ikr678 5mo agoHome insurance also (ie replacement cost after damaging weather event).
- queenkjuul 5mo agoI can't help but think that this essentially ruled it out in much of the country -- i get the impression Tesla doesn't tend to consider Midwest markets in their initial engineering
- killjoywashere 5mo agoGAF did. There are two issues: 1) too expensive 2) not modular. I like that I can separate my solar decision from my roof decision. Panels make that possible.
- riffraff 5mo agoThere are a few companies, I remember Invisible Solar which produces modules which look like traditional clay tiles. The market pitch is different tho, they are aimed at providing less effective solar for places where you have a hard need to keep the old look, old churches, monumental buildings and such.
- yread 5mo agoI came across https://colorsolar.eu/ https://colorsolar.eu/ They can put basically any print on the solar panel
- jrmg 5mo agoSurely 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?
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- IneffablePigeon 5mo agoThe 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.
- danans 5mo ago> 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?
- RealityVoid 5mo agoThat and op said it's more expensive. Why would you do it flush, then? Looks? Eh, I prefer practicality over form and many architects would agree with being more honest.
- IneffablePigeon 5mo agoLooks, no need for bird caging to stop nests underneath the panels, and I don’t believe it is particularly more expensive if you do it when replacing the whole roof. It’s more expensive if you don’t want to replace your roof.
- christoph 5mo ago
- Teever 5mo agoTesla's inability to produce solar panels is why I'm most skeptical of the whole terafab datacentre in space stuff. Everyone gets caught up in the thermal management stuff and the power density stuff and whatever but to me that's a red herring. The real issue is that Tesla has never known the ability to produce solar panels at scale and Musk said in that recent interview with Dwarkesh that he intends to do all the solar production in house. So where's he getting the sand from? How are they going to purify it at scale? How are they going to turn it into ingots and then wafers and then cells and panels when they haven't even been able to produce a slim fraction of panels without all those extra steps over the past decade for their roofs? And if the goal is to have the industrial capacity to do all this in a few years and produce solar panels on the scale that he's talking about -- why doesn't he just lay those bad boys down en masse on Earth and solve the impending climate crisis and our current energy shortages? It just doesn't make sense.
- kortilla 5mo agoYou are mixing up Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX already produces solar panels for the 10,000+ satellites it has in space.
- objclxt 5mo ago> 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.
- kortilla 5mo agoCells != 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?
- pyrale 5mo ago> Tesla's inability to produce solar panels is why I'm most skeptical of the whole terafab datacentre in space stuff. I'm split on the datacenter-in-space stuff. I don't know whether I should disbelieve it because there is, obviously, no good way to evacuate heat in space, or because Musk talked about it, and he has an uncanny track record of not upholding his promises.
- Animats 5mo ago"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. In 2023, Tesla settled a class-action lawsuit for $6 million after customers accused the company of bait-and-switch pricing, with one plaintiff seeing their contracted price jump from $72,000 to $146,000." Ouch. The whole point was that it was supposed to be cheaper.
- lnsru 5mo agoIntegrated solar panels into the tiles are batshit crazy expensive compared to regular big solar panels from China. I was looking how to install them (some other vendor, not Tesla) and was shocked - you can’t plug the small tiles connected together directly into inverter. There is additional power electronics box in between. Economically it makes no sense. The single installation around is at the guy‘s house who had successful 7 figures exit. Of course, the roof looks awesome.
- christoph 5mo agoThis current crop of tech bros and companies really is the worst for humanity. Failed tech and projects I can understand, but it’s the total, consistent and persistent lack of care and disregard for people, customers & the planet. They never clean up their own mess either, and I even disliked the kids who did that at playgroup 40 years ago!! The sole ambition is always money & power. I read that article aghast at multiple points. I recently had 9.2kw of solar panels installed in the SE of England, the actual cost of the panels themselves was ~£1k. I’ve seen new installs going up with standard cheap panels nicely inset, flush into the roof itself. The roofers themselves have told me they are cheaper than a traditional roof due to the decreasing price of panels and ever increasing price of tile. Got a listed property with a slate roof? Solar could save you potentially £10k+ according to one roofer I spoke to. Panels were and always were going to be dumb commodity items. There’s literal fields literally filled with the things everywhere. Compare to say something like the PowerWall which they still sell bucket loads of and I have one myself, Elon be damned… However, the PowerWall still suffers from that worst of all tech bro sins of trying to limit YOUR access to YOUR data. I wanted to add an ESP CYD to display all my Home Assistant data when we had solar installed to help us as a family see what was happening in realtime. It’s incredibly useful - In typical HN fashion I rolled my own and avoided ESPHome, making it just how I wanted and I love it! 3d printed case and all! Boots in 2 seconds and just works! I had obviously and wrongly assumed the PW3 would be easy as pie. Getting realtime data out of the PW3 is a freaking Kafka-esque nightmare… the only workable solution to which was setting up another dedicated ESP32 to connect directly to the PW own perm on wifi and weird custom API and shunt the data over BT. Tesla could break it all at a moments notice with an update and i’ll be out of hours trying to fix it. The whole thing is cat&mouse hoop jumping, the likes of which I haven’t seen since the earlier console hacking days. Tesla will display the realtime data through their servers, through their app, but if you want that… Anyway, please everybody who’s all gung ho on the Anthropic and OpenAI hype trains remember - every single big tech company has had the exact same disregard for you, your family, your home and your planet since the start. It’s probably more consistent than Moore’s law at this point. Nothing is going to be different this time around.
- someluccc 5mo agoThe monstrous tech bros destroying humanity by bringing about electric cars, intelligent machines, mapping the world, bringing information to anyone anywhere. I on the other hand, Maximus Virtus, am a net gain to humanity when I hack into tech products for visualizing my home’s data.
- pram 5mo agoI don’t think it’s that good of an idea because only 50% of my roof was good for solar power (that is what faces the sun) so having the entire thing be panels is mostly a waste. I’m sure this is the case for a lot of houses. When I had panels installed, adding them on the “bad side” would only gain a few kwh.
- nolist_policy 5mo agoPanels are so cheap it doesn't matter.
- stephen_g 5mo agoRegular solar panels yes, but not the Tesla panels!
- pavon 5mo agoI don't think you typically install PV tiles on the entire Tesla Solar Roof. They have matching non-solar tiles, and you choose how much of the roof will be PV.
- lathiat 5mo agoThis is sort of over stated generally. In Australia where North is “optimal”, even South facing panels produce only 20-30% less and East/West about 15%. It does vary a bit by latitude but it’s not at all pointless to install them in other orientations in many places. I have not done the math to see how much of the world this extends to, but it applies to a fairly large chunk of Australia. Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/panels/direction/ https://www.solarquotes.com.au/panels/direction/ Tesla’s system also had non solar tiles so you could just skip the panels in whichever parts you wanted. Roof construction is quite different here to the US though. We never have the plywood layer, it’s either ceramic tile or Colorbond steel directly onto usually wooden sometimes steel beams.
- awestroke 5mo agoAustralia is pretty close to the equator
- scotty79 5mo agoI hope somebody figures out at some point how to do roofing with large integrated panels that could be solar.
- defrost 5mo agoYeah, BlueScope Steel (Australia) did this with three separate prototype designs from 2012 - 2015 that were manufactured, installed and currently have had a decade of all weather on house trials. The Australian market is largely adding trad PV panels to existing housing, but there are signs of greater uptake of integrated PV + weather proof + thermal insulation roofing panels by architects and hopefully will be seen more on new mass produced housing plans. ~ https://arena.gov.au/projects/integrated-pv-solar-roofing/ https://arena.gov.au/projects/integrated-pv-solar-roofing/
- youngtaff 5mo agoThis Estonian companies does that https://roofit.solar/ https://roofit.solar/
- GoToRO 5mo agoThe problem with solar roofs is that it combines a changing technology, PV solar, to something that does not change, roofs. So now every time the new technology advances you need to pay for the new PV cells and the same roof tiles again. Solar roof will work once the PV tech settles down. From 20% eficiency to 100% it's a long way to go.
- xnx 5mo agoAside 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.
- number6 5mo agoIt's central vs decentralisation. The electricy is consumed in the houses and not on the empty land. Parking lots become a win-win with electric cars. They also keep the cars cleen and sun protected.
- dghlsakjg 5mo agoAnd it increases installation costs by a pretty huge amount. Installing solar panels in a field is MUCH cheaper than bolting them to a roof or building a structure to hold them above a car park. Plus, most solar installs are grid connected so a significant portion of the electricity tends not to be consumed where it is produced. It’s not as if installing solar is an alternative to grid connections for most practical reasons.
- perilunar 5mo agoClearly they make economic sense or people wouldn't buy them.
- general1465 5mo agoWho could have expect that one big panel with one connection will have more reliability and better cost than lot of small panels with many connections.
- readthenotes1 5mo agoAny article on Solar Roof that doesn't mention Tesla buying solar roof from Elon musk's cousin when solar roof was going under is an article not worth reading
- stephen_g 5mo agoIt's not quite even that - he wanted to bail out his cousin's failing solar business with Tesla shareholders' money, but to try and justify it, they pretended that Solar Roof was a fully developed, ready to sell product that was going to be revolutionary and worth buying SolarCity for, when it was actually just a concept they'd quickly come up with and some 3D renders. They actually had to develop it (with Tesla shareholders' money) after buying out the failing SolarCity.
- freediddy 5mo agoMy friend has Tesla solar roof. It's a great product but it's too expensive. At one point after signing the contract, Tesla mailed him and notified that his previous signed contract was void and they sent him a new contract where the price had doubled to over $100k. They told he he had to sign the new contract in order for it to go forward. This is classic Elon Musk tactic, which is to do whatever the fuck you want, laws be damned, and then try to bully your way through it. My friend didn't budge. They would call him or email him and kept harrassing him to sign the new contract and he said no. I don't remember there being a lot of news about this but I couldn't believe they had the gall to try this, although as I said, this is classic Elon Musk tactics. Eventually I think other solar roof customers started to band together, and eventually Tesla caved and honored the original contract, as if they were doing him a favor. I'm not surprised that this technology is going to fail because it's too expensive and Musk's promise of dropping prices, surprise surprise!, never manifested.
- cryptoegorophy 5mo agoWhy is this elektrek website still gets quoted? It is a very very biased website. I would dismiss any “opinions” or articles they post.
- infinitewars 5mo agoThe reporting on Elektrek is top notch. They care deeply about real sustainable energy and transportation and are willing to dig deep past the marketing and plainly report the facts. I can't count the number of times they've had exclusive scoops or found insightful angles nobody else was concerning.
- corpoposter 5mo agoThis may be true, but from an editorial perspective they are openly and aggressively anti-Tesla. I think it's worth noting as this article is Tesla related.
- infinitewars 5mo agoWhile most every other articles on Tesla (historically) had been fawning megafans.
- freetime2 5mo agoWhat about this article do you find questionable? I think it would help to prove your point if you included specific examples. The article seemed fine to me.
- cityofdelusion 5mo agoElectrek has a long history of going between blind fanboyism and blind hate, the history is all there to peruse. They only changed their tune with the referral program debacle a few years back which was seen as a betrayal. It’s hard to trust “reporting” when it’s historically operated more like a tabloid.
- t1234s 5mo agoShame.. I've seen one of these in person on a high-end home and its a very nice looking product. I assume the lifespan would be similar to a metal roof.
- t1234s 5mo agoRegular solar panels work well but are an eyesore on a nice home.
- pbmonster 5mo agoThere's a third way: in-roof or roof integrated photovoltaics. Normal panels, but integrated into the roof. Those look amazing. Very popular in Switzerland where some villages have strict aesthetic rules for buildings. Next best thing aesthetically are full-roof racks, where one face of the roof is 100% covered in panels. Nowadays you just have to select the right panel and you can make it tile the plane perfectly.
- tln 5mo agoDon't you need fire setbacks? I didn't think full roof racks were possible
- pbmonster 5mo agoBuilding 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.
- tln 5mo agoI 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
- 5mo ago
- freetime2 5mo ago> 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 biggest consideration.
- ericpauley 5mo agoAre these payback periods factoring in opportunity cost? If not the game is already lost. If so periods that long are so sensitive to alternate asset returns that they could easily be infinity.
- Neywiny 5mo agoOpportunity cost meaning investing with standard rule of thumb returns? I think usually it's just total cost at installation divided by the product of power generation and energy cost. So that's $ / (W x $/Wh), which should reduce down to just hours that can be trivially converted to years
- ejoso 5mo agoCost of alternative investments not pursued as a result of deployed capital.
- hello8402 5mo ago> Cost of alternative investments not pursued as a result of deployed capital. Once you’re achieving 30-50% annual returns over 20-30 year horizons (PE, HFT, invite-only HF) , you stop caring about cost of capital for anything less than US$1 million. But 10% VTI / VOO, sure, factor that 10% into your excel.
- ejoso 5mo ago
- dacops 5mo agoTesla [Product] is poorly supported really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone at this point. Their cars have build quality issues, self driving continues to be "just around the corner", their service centers are cheap, the solar roof is it's own nightmare, the pivot to robots is laughable, the robot taxis are a PR stunt that are amusing but in a cringey way... And the promises over the years of automatic chargers, replaceable batteries, sensors, etc. The company had a great idea early, had tons of goodwill, a growing manufacturing capacity, and squandered it chasing whatever Elon dreamt up.
- econ 5mo agoNormal roof tiles are just as ugly as solar panels. They should simply make panels in all sizes so that they cover the roof properly. You probably need only a few custom size ones. I forget who but it reminds me of electric cars with speakers to restore the engine noise. There is nothing beautiful about noise.
- newsclues 5mo agoEVs have speakers for safety, not sonic beauty.
- snozolli 5mo agoEVs are required to produce sound for pedestrian safety, but they are absolutely beginning to make faked IC engine sounds for aesthetic appeal. See the Ioniq 5 and Dodge Charger EV.
- newsclues 5mo agoIf it's required, then you can differentiate your product on the market, but the regulatory requirements are driving the decision to spend money on it.
- c6400sc 5mo agoHave you heard of Fratzonic? If you haven't, you can't unhear it. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/08/heres-what-the-electric-dodge-chargers-fratzonic-exhaust-sounds-like/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/08/heres-what-the-electric...
- econ 5mo agoI use to have a neighbor with a car that made all nearby buildings shake, 5am every morning, idling for 3-4 minutes. It always made me laugh but it never struck me as beautiful.
- bilsbie 5mo agoSolar shingles seems so smart. I guess they couldn’t get the cost down to be competitive. Hmm actual solar panels are so cheap now could you use them as large shingles on a new build?
- ProAm 5mo agoNo 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-epstein-tesla-kimbal-musk https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/jeffrey-epst... [2] https://fortune.com/2026/02/13/kimbal-musk-jeffrey-epstein-honey-trap-elon/ https://fortune.com/2026/02/13/kimbal-musk-jeffrey-epstein-h... [3] https://www.denverpost.com/2026/02/13/kimbal-musk-epstein-files-colorado/ https://www.denverpost.com/2026/02/13/kimbal-musk-epstein-fi...
- 1123581321 5mo agoMy 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.
- dangus 5mo agoThis is also representative of Tesla’s stagnation as a company. They essentially have not made a new product since the Model Y came out. No, the Cybertruck doesn’t count, I don’t think we can even consider that a product brought to completion in terms of being an automobile of acceptable market competitiveness. They are struggling in China which is pretty insane considering their head start in that country. Clearly the solar roof idea could have been iterated on and made to make more financial sense. I think they could have built it into a panel solution that integrates a standard steel roof. But again, what it looks like to me is that Tesla hasn’t actually been able to put real money and effort into any products at all. I think all their best people quit, and their leadership is distracted and ineffective.
- AtlasBarfed 5mo ago[flagged]
- RataNova 5mo agoI think the pattern is less "Tesla can't invent anymore" and more that the company seems much worse at turning ambitious concepts into mature, supported products
- 5mo ago
- outside1234 5mo agoThis whole article is a summary of Elon Musk in general. Lots of promises, no delivery.
- danpalmer 5mo agoI bet there's an aspect of normalisation here too. Tesla Solar Roofs were all about looks, all about not looking like you had solar panels, but as the world warms up (pun intended) to solar, having visible panels is less of a concern, and may even be desirable.
- RataNova 5mo agoSolar Roof made sense when panels were seen as something to disguise
- timzaman 5mo agoplease realize the author (frank lambert) has turned full anti-elon propaganda so take everything he writes with a grain of salt. or better - avoid.
- xiphias2 5mo agoThe magazin was bought I think. There's always some interesting background of the stories. Solarcity was clearly a great example of Elon's ,,no investor left behind'' philosophy: if he promotes a company and gets investors to invest in it, he is doing whatever he can to make sure that they at least don't lose their money (by merging it to a bigger company he controls), even if it wouldn't be the best financial decision. So far this strategy has been working quite well for both him and the investors.
- tensor 5mo agoIt would be better for investors if he didn't destroy all his products with both his obscene politics and also his little fantasy pet projects that no one wants. Eventually the house of cards will collapse. At this point all that investors can hope for is something akin to a government bond. Unfortunately one for a government that is currently excelling at depreciating anything related to it.
- willio58 5mo agoI mean.. did he turn anti-Elon or did society turn anti-Elon when Elon started doing insane shit? Reminder: Elon bribed his way into leading a self-formed and now essentially defunct government organization to "save costs" but failed to do so in any meaningful way. He did that like a year ago. Meanwhile, the dude made BILLIONS off of government tax breaks, and still leaches off the government with his other companies. Frank being against Elon speaks less about Frank and more about Elon in my eyes.
- whatever1 5mo agoOh no! An author is against a billionaire who does nazi salutes and promotes daily white race supremacy content in the social media he owns!
- RataNova 5mo agoI don't think the failure is that integrated solar tiles are impossible. It's that Tesla seemed to underestimate how much of this business is execution, service and long-term support rather than just product design
- locallost 5mo agoIt's a good idea if you're driving looking at the rear view mirror. Roof tiles are a thing of the past. It matches what I think a roof is, but if you can do the same thing for a fraction of the price it will win out, and for the new generations, solar panels attached to roofs will be just as normal as tiles for me. I do think it's an interesting idea to use panels everywhere, but it can't be a complicated and expensive solution. You could maybe use them as a facade or lately people have used them for fences.
- wg0 5mo agoCyber truck and boring tunnels of the solar world.
- gloosx 5mo agoHow it's going with humans to Mars by 2024? Coast-to-Coast Full-Self Driving? 1 Million Robotaxis? 25000$ Model 2? Hyperloop? 2 trillion $ DOGE Cost Cuts? Elon Musk is like that developer you hired which always promises "this feature will be ready tommorow" and it end's up in the backlog for 6 years. The richest person in the world who understood that the world is not built on trust anymore and all you need is hype.
- tweetle_beetle 5mo agoTo extend your metaphor further, it would be like also giving them performance bonuses and building them a new home office which they then rent out on AirBnB on the strength of those predictions. > Tesla acquired SolarCity for $2.6 billion partly on the strength of this vision [of producing thousands
- tyiz 5mo ago[dead]
- dotcoma 5mo agoAre there other companies thriving selling solar roofs, or is the idea just too unpractical ?
- ern 5mo agoTesla’s Solar Roof uses string inverters rather than micro-inverters or power optimizers, which means that partial shading on any section of the roof can shut down production for that entire string. This is a significant design limitation that competing solar installers address with panel-level optimization technology from companies like Enphase and SolarEdge. This seems to be overblown. I've seen plenty of string inverters around without issues, I'm not sure why this being used against Tesla in particular.
- szszrk 5mo agoMaybe should be rephrased, but still makes sense to me. They use inferior tech for a premium price. But yeah, not really their unique problem. Just cheaper solution that is out there.
- NikolaosC 5mo ago[flagged]
- LunicLynx 5mo agoI’m sorry but I don’t understand why this is a story on hacker news. Nothing about this is interesting. I’m open to understand why I might be wrong though. I think marketwatch or financial times from the title…
- thelastgallon 5mo agoSolar panels have become cheap as dirt and the balance of system is majority of the cost. Installing these massive panels on roof requires a lot more skilled labor and time. Its time to incorporate solar into more areas of the building, build fences with vertical panels, mount them on walls, solar car canopy in front of the garage, optimize for fast installation with ease of installation as well as repair. We should think of more structural solar, solar panels (either by themselves or with their mounting hardware) become part of the structure. For roofs, hail is another consideration, hail damage causes complication. Age of roof is another consideration, you don't want to do solar anytime, the right time is when the roof needs to be replaced, which is usually ~25 years.
- toddmorey 5mo agoHave always said community solar programs are the way to do residential solar. In those programs, you pay for and own off-site solar panels, then the energy they produce is credited to your electric bill. They end up installed at commercial locations ideal for solar: often on covered parking, in fields, or on industrial roofs. Easier to repair, they can do larger panels, no issues with your roof line or roof condition.
- ymolodtsov 5mo agoNow 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.
- ImPostingOnHN 5mo agoNow imagine this hypothetical "energy company" has the community over a barrel with no viable alternatives, and uses their monopoly to jack up power rates and screw the community.
- tapoxi 5mo agoThe 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.
- thelastgallon 5mo ago(This comment is a US centric observation and may be somewhat relatable to other counties which use shingles. Solar shingles are not a thing in many many countries with billions of people, homes are built with concrete). Solar shingles (Tesla roof, GAF) seem like a smart idea -- why do 2 layers of install, shingles and solar panels, instead save on both material and labor by using solar shingles. It didn't work because the shingles are small, massively increasing the number of parts, connectors, and wiring -- and all the intensive skilled labor that it needs. Labor needs to be skilled as well as increases the number of hours. It also increases failure rates (at install time?) as well as lifecycle maintenance costs from repairs. Standard shingled roof (not the solar) is just an illegal immigrant working for $2/hour with a nail gun, unskilled labor, finishes things super super quick. The above is a manual summary from this insightful thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48166226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48166226 Could it work in future? We don't know. I think the fundamental constraint is people's existing belief system on what a roof is supposed to look like and unwillingness to consider that all roofs don't have to look the same. Perhaps its possible to let go of existing shingle design, build massive panels and make it a structural roof along with metal, but it may not have any buyers. And most definitely will not be accepted by any HOA. Most of the US in in a HOA regime. Any tiniest variation from the rigid HOA rules and regulations (slightly different shade) will require an entire roof rebuild. The constraint is not technological, but human beliefs (about what a roof should look like) and existing rigid structures on how we organized our society.
- pjc50 5mo agoThe widespread UK new build style looks like this: https://lirp.cdn-website.com/0e11269a/dms3rep/multi/opt/Integrated+Solar+Panels-1920w.png https://lirp.cdn-website.com/0e11269a/dms3rep/multi/opt/Inte... It doesn't blend with the surrounding slates (asphalt shingles are rare in the UK, use of asphalt is more for flat roofs and sheds), but .. how much does that really matter? It sounds like US HOAs have replicated the worst aspects of UK "conservation areas", preventing building variation, while not actually preserving anything other than a McMansion style of no historical or aesthetic importance?
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- dv_dt 5mo agoI keep hoping some architect will take up an residential building design with solar panels to rethink with deeper integration than just a "material" swap out. On the roof, mounting panels inches over the roof, or even as the roof material is a terrible thermal environment. Why not design in a rooftop open air living space, topped with solar panels. Panels get cooler temperatures, the physical roof gets reduced temperatures and probably extended life through shading too. At least for some new building and sites it would be interesting to see.
- idiotsecant 5mo agoYou 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.
- itissid 5mo ago> 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?
- sokka_h2otribe 5mo agoYour roofs are (often) concrete flat roofs with structural floor The American roofs mentioned are typically significantly inclined, made of a less rigid material (wood, asphalt shingles), and not built to the expectations of supporting as much. When OP says 'the worst place' they mean it is not a structural place, it is hard to access, and it serves an important function that is best not to mess with. Note, I do not fully agree with OP but I get the points made.
- idiotsecant 5mo agoAmerican 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.
- clearstack 5mo agoTesla's 10-K breaks Energy Gen & Storage out as its own segment. Megapack (commercial batteries) is doing the heavy lifting there — Solar Roof was always a small piece of an already small segment by revenue
- Rover222 5mo agoYeah, it's a cool idea, but just can't compete economically with normal solar panels.