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Tesla killing Solar Roof is leaving installers with six-figure losses
- 7e 24d agoMusk’e fraudulent bailout of Solar City (and himself) reaches its conclusion.
- georgemcbay 24d ago> Musk’e fraudulent bailout of Solar City (and himself) reaches its conclusion. Nothing ever really ends, he's just higher up in the stack now fraudulently bailing out everything below with SpaceX.
- Reubend 24d agoIs there any competitor in the USA? The idea of roof tiles which are themselves solar panels seems sensible to me, and it's more aesthetically pleasing than putting panels on top of normal tiles.
- sorenjan 24d agoJackery Solar Roof.
- dbt00 24d agoNo, it's an impractical idea that nobody wanted.
- bjelkeman-again 24d agoI did want it. Would have looked great on my quite old house where it is highly impractical to have conventional solar panels, as there is essentially not enough space anywhere to have more than one or two panels in the same location, and I need new tiles soon anyway. I think it turns out it was announced too early and attempted to scale before it was ready (turns out it won't be ready at all in this iteration).
- delecti 24d ago> not enough space anywhere to have more than one or two panels in the same location That isn't necessarily a downside though. By having panels on a variety of orientations on your roof, you can spread out the generation through the day and mitigate a bit of the duck curve.
- bjelkeman-again 23d agoIt is true, but my house has some many dormers (a new word for me), chimneys and air vents, that I hardly can get a meaningful set of panels in. Solar tiles would have been great. Alas.
- KeplerBoy 24d agoWorks perfectly fine in Europe. https://www.prefa.at/produkt-katalog/solarsysteme/solardachplatte https://www.prefa.at/produkt-katalog/solarsysteme/solardachp...
- JKCalhoun 24d agoInteresting. They look great on a single-surface roof with 90° edges. It seems that as soon as your roof deviates from that the aesthetics begin to trend toward conventional PV panels (which of course also do not accommodate more complex roof profiles).
- rsynnott 24d agoBonkers roof profiles are primarily and American thing, to be honest; not that they’re totally non-existent elsewhere, but the super-complex roof on a detached house is very American.
- JKCalhoun 24d agoInteresting. (Yeah, I kind of envy the "A-Frame" that I <rarely> spot in the wild here—so simple). I didn't know the manifold roof was an American thing.
- rsynnott 23d agoA (rather snarky) piece about it here: https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149948821221/mcmansions-101-roofs https://mcmansionhell.com/post/149948821221/mcmansions-101-r... tl;dr - It's driven by internal room shape requirements (plus weak planning; in some jurisdictions "no, that's an eyesore mess, redesign it" it a thing in planning, but I gather largely not in most US juristicitions).
- walrus01 24d agoIt's extremely labor intensive and costly to put stuff up on the roof, and problematic in terms of electrical connector, electrical safety, and being proprietary for mounting and roof repair. Big ass PV panels that are 2.0 x 1.0 meter in size (or larger) are so cheap now for photovoltaic ground mounts that the labor and mounting can actually cost more than the panels. 460W panels can be something like $0.25 USD per STC watt in single pallet quantities shipped as LTL freight. Or at least if you have to use your roof, just put them on boring aluminum rail mounts on roofs which are a much more known factor for roofing repair and labor.
- _JamesA_ 24d agoHow does one go about acquiring these?
- walrus01 24d agoBy googling wholesale solar panel dealers, one example would be https://krannich-solar.com/us-en/ https://krannich-solar.com/us-en/ Assuming you're in the US 48 states there should be plenty of companies that'll take your money for a factory sealed pallet load of panels. They come wrapped up from the factory, basically all they do is do the invoicing/billing to you, they buy them by the 40' or 45' container load and then load them onto trucks at a loading dock. PV panel factory datasheets will clearly specify how many are on a pallet and how many pallets fit in a single container.
- SwamyM 24d agoHave you done this yourself? I am curious what the installation process is like. It seems like all the home solar companies I've dealt with want to sell you the whole kit (panels, inverter, etc.). If you've done this, I am curious how your experience was.
- walrus01 24d agoI've done it for small scale off grid telecom projects in the 10 to 20kW class of total quantity of panels at one site, not actually at my home (which is surrounded by trees on all sides in the pacific northwest, I'd need to build a 40kW ground mount to have any reasonable amount of production). It's completely doable if you study electrical fundamentals but I'd also recommend hiring a pro to help out if you don't have the background. There is considerable overlap between the knowledge base for -48VDC telecom battery/DC bus/breaker/fuse panel and distribution systems and PV/off grid solar stuff, so using some of the same people who do on-grid rectifier-to-telecom-DC-power-system work was fairly straightforward for us.
- readthenotes1 24d agoSorta. The closest I know of is https://www.gaf.com/en-us/roofing-materials/residential-roofing-materials/solar-roof/gaf-energy-timberline-solar-roofing-system https://www.gaf.com/en-us/roofing-materials/residential-roof... The advantage is that you don't have to drill additional holes into your roof, nor do you have to have shingles under the solar panels. Depending on where you live and how much you pay in taxes, they may be enticing.
- Vaslo 24d agoClearly it’s very expensive and people aren’t paying for it.
- JKCalhoun 24d agoHundreds (and hundreds?) of tiles with twice that number of electrical connectors… what could possible go wrong? I mean vs. a dozen or twenty large, conventional panels. Maybe we need to adjust our aesthetics before we compromise the engineering overly much.
- rsynnott 24d agoIt's a slightly weird proposition, in that, well, pitched roofs last about 50 to 100 years, typically (at least here; I gather it _is_ somewhat different in the US due to different materials and building standards). So you probably don't really _want_ to prematurely replace your whole roof, so your market is basically... people who happen to need a roof replaced right now? They also appear to have been _extremely_ expensive. Like on the order of 10x the cost of a conventional solar installation. Conventional solar panels look perfectly fine to me, FWIW.
- IgorPartola 24d agoThere are apparently several traditional roof shingle makers who have previewed solar tiles. A friend of mine who is a roofer told me he would not trust Tesla and is waiting for a reliable supplier. Apparently he is a smart man.
- froggy 24d agoI was getting solar quotes recently and came across the CertainTeed brand that makes a “solar shingle”. I have no idea where they are made or how they compare to regular panels.
- tzs 24d agoYes. Both GAF and CertainTeed, the #1 (30% of the market) and #3 (15% of the market) shingle makers in the US, both have solar shingles. Their solar shingles looks like regular shingles and install on the roof the same way as regular shingles. Installers just need to be regular roofers with some extra training to handle the peculiarities of solar shingles. I don't know about GAF but the extra training for CertainTeed can be done online. Compare to Tesla Solar Roof where the physical installation requires completely different skills. As a result there are way more crews available who can install GAF or CertainTeed solar shingles than Tesla roofs. The Tesla roof tiles are more efficient than the solar shingles and they cover the whole roof, whereas the solar shingles usually don't cover the whole roof, so the Tesla roof usually generates more power. GAF is 140 years old and CertainTeed is 122 years old, and making building materials is their main business. This makes them a lot less risky than Tesla was. If they ever decide to stop doing solar shingles it is almost certain they will handle it better than Tesla since their core business depends on keeping roofing contractors happy. They will almost certainly keep repair parts available, crews will remain available for maintenance. Even if decades from now replacement solar shingles are not available any dead solar shingle can be replaced with a regular shingle and an electrician can adjust the system accordingly. When the roof reaches end of life and needs to be replaced, you just need an electrician to de-energize the roof and then removing it is just like removing a regular roof. The Tesla roof on the other hand requires a special crew, both for repairs and replacement. Removing the roof is a much more involved process than removing a solar shingles roof. This is likely going to screw existing Tesla roof owners. With Tesla actively in the business it was seen as a premium feature, bumping the market value of your house by maybe 5 or so percent. Now buyers will see a house with one as a potential maintenance liability that will be a nightmare when it reaches EOL. Sellers may have to offer a substantial discount to sell their houses. It comes down to GAF and CertainTeed treat it as a roof first which has solar technology, whereas with Tesla is more solar technology that is a roof.
- elzbardico 24d agoIt was incredibly badly engineered product, sold in a stupid way.
- Gee101 24d agoWhy was it badly engineered?
- fooblaster 24d agoThe entire premise is stupid. Panels need to be large to have reduced install costs and wiring costs. Install costs dominate solar install pricing in the United states. It is far far cheaper to install a new roof and giant solar installation than to go with a solar roof. It's just a broken concept at the very start.
- iugtmkbdfil834 24d agoWas going to so ask the same. As much as I dislike Tesla and its products, I can't take away its value proposition ( good integration and simplicity for end user ).
- elzbardico 24d agoThe last thing we can call this thing is simple.
- kingleopold 24d agocosts made ROI very low, that comes to my mind
- elzbardico 24d agoFirst, Read the installation manual. https://energylibrary.tesla.com/docs/Public/Solar/Roof/InstallManual/en-us/index.html https://energylibrary.tesla.com/docs/Public/Solar/Roof/Insta... Now that we are on the same page. think about the problems of such a complex system when you turn an ordinary roof repair into an electrical system repair and vice-versa. Your roof was damaged by a hailstorm? great now you need a specialized roofer who is also a solar system technician. Any solar system technician used to standard solar equipments? No, one that is familiar with the bespoke tesla system. Now every roofing issue is an electrical issue, and every electrical issue with your PVs is a roofing problem too. Need to Everything seems to be oriented toward aesthetics. Eliminating the gap between the panels in a roof is more aesthetically pleasing, but that gap in traditional panel installations serves as an important element in thermal management. If you compare it with traditional PVs it sacrifices, cooling, modularity, maintainability, firefighter response, conductor and connections visibility, and simplicity for good looks. It makes you dependent on a single vendor for your now dual-function roof. For me, it is a text case of bad engineering.
- Zigurd 24d agoOptimus robots will arrive in Robo taxis to install your Tesla solar roof which will also receive Internet and XAI LLM service from orbiting data centers. When? By the end of the year.
- boredatoms 24d agoI enjoy this style of absurdism humor
- Johnyjohnson123 24d agoHahahaha
- jordanb 24d agoBut can I pay in dogecoin?
- stackghost 24d ago>Tesla offloaded the hardest, least profitable part of the Solar Roof — the physical install and the customer relationship — onto small local companies, let them absorb the training and tooling costs, and then pulled the product out from under them. Tesla keeps a manageable warranty liability on 3,000 roofs. The installers keep the stranded investment, the abandoned pipelines, and the awkward job of servicing a discontinued product for the next two decades. Well, that's certainly on-brand for Elon Musk. Over promise, under deliver, pay a PR firm to operate sock puppet accounts to tell you how great he is. That is his MO.
- ElProlactin 24d ago> Tesla offloaded the hardest, least profitable part of the Solar Roof — the physical install and the customer relationship — onto small local companies, let them absorb the training and tooling costs, and then pulled the product out from under them. I wonder how many of the companies understood this is what Tesla was doing, and recognized the risk inherent in their position.
- toomuchtodo 24d agoNah, same with Amazon delivery subcontractors. This is sophisticated capitalists and industrialists preying on the unsophisticated.
- felixgallo 24d agoDo you suspect Amazon is going to stop delivering packages?
- toomuchtodo 24d agoI suspect they will continue to use “contractors” until regime change forces them not to. Midterms look good for swinging toward Dems (due to gestures broadly at everything), and this federal admin has an end date (relates to NLRB and employee classification enforcement). These issues change on an arc over years or decades. NYC has started to do this until then: https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/08/mayor-mamdani-backs--delivery-protection-act--to-rein-in-amazon- https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/08/mayor-mamdani... Bloomberg investigation: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-02/amazon-trump-settlement-win-showed-just-how-tough-delivery-drivers-have-it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-06-02/amazon-tr... | https://archive.today/3Nnj9 https://archive.today/3Nnj9
- JLO64 24d agoI deliver packages for Amazon as an independent contractor (via Amazon Flex). While there are plenty of issues I have with it, I have an overall positive sentiment. For those who don’t want to work full time hours (you can schedule yourself in 1-5 hour blocks), immigrants, or are just in a bad spot it’s not a bad option. I’ve worked for food delivery apps as well and I think it’s a better gig compared to those other ones.
- riquettistudio 24d agoI hate how big companies always have the power to screw up the workers.
- doodlebugging 24d agoI wonder about those first adopters and where this leaves them with future support or warranty issues. The system itself looks so different from standard panel-based rooftop solar that installers will need to have been trained to install the tiles. After those installers get stiffed I feel like they might have zero incentive to come out and look at any systems that develop issues over time. I looked at this tile-based solar when he (Musk) announced it and while it looks like a perfect system if you can make it all work, a standard roof-top solar system is easier to install and maintain. I have enough space at my place that I can install the panels in a ground mount so there was no reason to consider this specialty setup. If I had purchased a system like this I would definitely have extra components on hand in case something breaks. I would treat it like the first model year of a new vehicle design. Buy the second or third model year so most of the problems are someone else's.
- JKCalhoun 24d agoWell, class-action lawsuits are a thing.
- toomuchtodo 24d agoTesla mandates arbitration in their purchase agreements. Last I checked when buying a vehicle, you could opt out upon written snail mail request (I opted out, certified return receipt with a copy to my state’s Attorney General), unsure if that still applies or applies to this product.
- pavlov 24d agoA solar energy product from Tesla was an odd fit with the CEO’s anti-environmentalist MAGA stance anyway.
- fortran77 24d agoYou're right! It is odd that someone who makes electrical storage and electrical cars would be interested in solar PV, too.
- torlok 24d agoThe reason Tesla acquired SolarCity was to bail Musk out. Same as xAI, and then SpaceX, bailed out his Twitter purchase.
- cramer4next 23d agoYeah, making electric cars too is on odd fit given your rational. Kinda like having a Tesla and an F-150 in the same driveway. I must be MAGA too.
- JKCalhoun 24d ago"…Tesla installed only about 3,000 Solar Roof systems across the US, peaking at just 21 to 32 installations a week — more than 95% short of Elon Musk’s repeated promise of 1,000 weekly installations by 2019-2020." What was he smoking? (Oh, never mind that.) I mean was he expecting Federal tax incentives/rebates for installing solar to create that demand for 1,000/week? (Or perhaps I should ask what were all these contractors smoking that thought it was a good idea to sink $100K of their money to go into business pedaling his wares?)
- kls0e 24d ago"Why wouldn't you?"
- pessimizer 24d agoSeems very related to another electrek story today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599058 If a Tesla Cybercab fleet were profitable, Tesla wouldn’t sell you one They seem to just be laying downside risk off onto suckers, and holding on to upside. They probably broke even on the Solar Roof project, while their contractors are ruined. One arbitrary day they could bail on cybercabs just as easily, probably walk away having made a pile of money anyway, while a bunch of people are stuck with a bunch of used up vehicles that they have to try and sell, and can only sell with the consent of Tesla itself. Great model. Good followup on "do things that the state should be doing so the state pays you a ton of money, then have a luxury version of the same thing that you sell to wealthy customers (whose tech has been entirely subsidized by the state.)" Musk's empire is a purely financial play that has nothing to do with tech, just like Palantir. It's all money games, like everything else in the West. Scam age.
- formvoltron 24d agoThe museum that is being built currently in Louisiana will dwarf all this sort of thing for decades to come.
- dekhn 24d agoBusiness has risk.
- shevy-java 24d agoDo not become dependent on corporations run by egoistic billionaires.
- freediddy 24d agoTesla Solar Roof has been dead for years and years. Any installers continuing with this knew the writing was on the wall years ago. My friend got a solar roof and they doubled the price on him to over 100k after they signed the contract, and tried to strong arm him into agreeing to the new price. This was 3 or 4 years ago, and once the prices doubled to 100k+ you knew that the entire thing was dead. Typical Musk behavior to try to break the contract and try to re-negotiate even though it's clearly illegal.
- monster_truck 24d agoThey do the same thing with their cars! Incredibly expensive proprietary fasteners that you might only need 12 of sold in unit sizes like 500 or 1000. Sometimes they change multiple times per model year. You cannot buy them secondhand or share with other shops as part of the agreement to buy them in the first place. Know a couple auto body dudes that lost their ass thinking they would be like every other automaker. They have all since stopped doing work on Teslas.
- nomilk 24d agoWhy did it fail? I remember seeing the launch announcement for SolarCity and being wowed (logic: every house needs a roof, so why not make the roof from solar tiles instead of regular tiles and get free energy). I guess the unit-economics didn’t work? (but seems like a good thing to have tried given the massive TAM)
- torlok 24d agoSolar Roof was vaporware when it was presented by Musk. It was blatant fraud. There's no "free energy" here. The roof was way more expensive than a regular roof covered in solar panels.
- kingkandu 23d agoTesla is not and was never about the products and actual business. It's a shit business. Its about hype farming so idiots take leveraged positions in the stock and get wiped out. If you see Elon saying something particularly distasteful or stupid he is collecting puts to liquidate.
- gumby 23d agoBIPV* has always failed for difficult-to-address reasons and the “Tesla” version was no different from the others in the market so had no differentiation that would allow it to survive. I know why Tesla bought the company (bail out musk’s cousin) but don’t know why they kept trying to sell the product for so long. * BIPV is “Building-Integrated Photo Voltaic” and the company Tesla bought was a late entrant to an already failing sector.
- PreownedPlaid 23d ago[dead]