Tesla agrees to finally honor solar roof prices on signed contracts

In communications shared with the court, Tesla has agreed to finally honor the solar roof prices given to customers who had signed contracts.

Back in March, Tesla added a new “roof complexity” factor to its solar roof prices that resulted in drastically increasing the price of its solar roof.

The price of solar roof projects increased between 30% to 150% for some.

That’s an incredible price increase in itself, but the strangest part of the situation is that Tesla decided to even apply the new price hike to customers who already had a signed contract for their upcoming solar roof project.

In some cases, customers who had signed a contract for Tesla a year ago were asked to fork as much as 100% more for their new roof even though they had a signed contract with Tesla.

Unsurprisingly, this resulted in several legal actions, which were consolidated into a class action.

However, in a new filing, Tesla’s lawyers informed the plaintiffs in the consolidated case that the company started “a program for customers who signed Solar Roof contracts before the April 2021 price changes to return those customers to their original pricing.”

The court communicated Tesla’s statement in the filing:

On September 13, 2021, counsel for Tesla informed counsel for Plaintiffs that Tesla had recently launched a program for customers who signed Solar Roof contracts before the April 2021 price changes to return those customers to their original pricing (if they were subject to a price increase in April 2021). Plaintiffs’ counsel have requested additional details and advised counsel forTesla that they believe settlement discussions should commence immediately in order to consider, clarify, and formalize certain terms of relief.

The plaintiffs have 30 days to explore this new “program” and make sure that it satisfies them before the legal action can be terminated.

Electrek‘s take

Honestly, I’m not sure what Tesla thought would happen here. They had signed contracts; they were going to have to honor those prices.

I am just bummed that those customers had to go to court to force Tesla to do the right thing.

I think it’s a good example of even though Tesla is a great company that has had the single greatest impact on accelerating electric vehicle adoption, it can still sometimes make the wrong moves, and we need to stay vigilant.

Tesla misestimated the cost of solar roofs. That’s okay. It happens. Increase the price, but you can not expect people doing renovations, who need a new roof, and who already have a signed contract for you to build that new roof, to fork tens of thousands of dollars more than they budgeted.

That’s not okay.

I am glad that they are now reverting that move, but I think they should look into why it was approved in the first place and why it took them so long to revert.

Interestingly, following the changes to Tesla’s referral program last week, the solar roof was the only eligible product for referral awards.

It was also increased to $500 per solar roof project activated. It could indicate that Tesla doesn’t have strong demand for it following the significant price increases.