Tesla starts offering free Powerwalls to people with big price increases on solar roof

Tesla is starting to offer free Powerwalls to people who received big price increases on solar roof projects that were already under contracts.

Last month, we reported that Tesla is drastically increasing the price of its solar roof tiles by as much as 50% based on an extremely inconsistent new “complexity factor.”

Even with the lowest complexity factor, the average quote price went up – raising questions about the actual reason behind the price increase.

Earlier this month, we reported that Tesla has also applied the price hike to solar roof projects with contracts already signed. Some of those homeowners had already even spent money on work in preparation for the installations.

In some cases, those homeowners are faced with tens of thousands more dollars in cost for those projects.

Tesla didn’t offer anything to those customers other than cancelling their contracts if they don’t want to accept the price increase.

Now a few weeks later, Electrek has learned that Tesla has started offering free Powerwalls to those customers in order to smoothen the price increase.

Several Tesla solar roof prospective buyers who had received the price increase have confirmed that Tesla has contacted them to offer a free Powerwall.

Tesla representatives wrote in the emails sent to customers:

Thank you for your continued support. We’d like to offer you one Powerwall at no additional charge when you proceed with your Solar Roof installation. 

Those customers had received price hikes between $9,000 and $12,000, which is not on the highest side of the price increase spectrum that customer experienced.

Tesla recently stopped selling the Powerwall without it being attached to a solar roof or solar panel project, but before the change, the company was lisiting the Powerwall at $7,500.

The gateway and installation cost would increase the price to $12,000, but that’s for just installing the Powerwall. It is a little cheaper to install at the same time as a solar installation.

Two homeowners who contacted ELectrek confirmed that they will take the deal.

Electrek’s Take

This is definitely a decent deal for people on the lower side of the price hike spectrum, but we have also seen people with $15,000+ price increases on their projects and for those people, it wouldn’t be as good as a deal.

The biggest problem is that Tesla didn’t offer that deal right away and it took 2 weeks, an article from Electrek, and complaints by customers in order for them to correct the move.

But this is a good example that it’s important to call out Tesla when they employ questionable business practices.

I’d still like more communications about the situation, especially the reason behind the higher price since the new complexity factor doesn’t seem consistent at all.