Tesla Solar Roof

Tesla (TSLA) is set to release its second quarter 2017  financial results on Wednesday, August 2 after market close. As usual, the release of the results will be followed by a conference call and Q&A with Tesla’s management at 2:30pm Pacific Time (5:30pm Eastern Time).

Here we take a look at what both the street and retail investors are expecting for the quarter.
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After his brother and former CEO of SolarCity, Lyndon Rive, left Tesla last month, now Peter Rive, the former CTO and co-founder at SolarCity, is also leaving the company.
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Earlier this year, CEO Elon Musk surprisingly said that Tesla would “probably” offer a solar roof as an option on the Model 3.

Now, Musk is throwing some cold water on the idea – virtually killing it.
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Tesla Gigafactory 2, a factory in Buffalo that Tesla took over after the acquisition of SolarCity, is about to start production of the company new solar roof tiles.

Like at Gigafactory 1 for battery production in Nevada, Tesla partnered with Panasonic to produce the cells and now the company is looking to hire as many as 300 workers as it is about to start production. 
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In this week’s top stories: Model 3 exterior and interior photos, a new Model S hypermiling record, EV news from Nissan, Chevy Bolt, Smart car, and Volvo, and more details on Tesla Solar Roof.

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Tesla is moving quickly with its upcoming solar roof tiles and a lot of customers are already waiting for it.

Now we learn of a few more new, albeit small, details coming to light through Tesla’s UL certification for the first versions of the tiles.
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Tesla’s solar roof tiles are not the first attempt at integrating solar cells into roofing products. Several companies have tried in the past and even delivered some products, even big companies like Dow Chemical, but they ended up discontinuing the product.

Now Tesla thinks that it has a winning formula and its new Vice President of Solar Products went as far as saying that other solar companies looking to compete in the segment are “kind of fucked”.
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Tesla is moving quickly with its new solar roof tiles. Early installations could start as soon as next month after the company started taking orders earlier this month.

Now we learn that the company just received approval from Underwriters Laboratories (UL) for permitting and installations.
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After first unveiling the product last year, Tesla started taking orders with a $1,000 deposit for the first versions of its solar roof tiles earlier this month.

Electrek has learned that demand exceeded expectations and that its solar roof tiles are now sold out ‘well into 2018’.
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Ever since the acquisition of SolarCity, Tesla has been looking to create synergies between its energy producing products, solar panels and now solar roof tiles, its energy storing products, Powerwalls and Powerpacks, and its energy-consuming products, its electric vehicles.

The latest synergy effort will take the form an in-car app for monitoring power generation – confirmed CEO Elon Musk.
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Tesla opened orders for its first two styles of solar roof tiles this week and the company plans to start installations within the next two months.

Through its acquisition of SolarCity, Tesla has now access to thousands of installers, but there are significant differences between installing solar panels and a whole roof. Roofing is more labor intensive and Tesla is now looking to train and hire a lot of roofers.
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Tesla introduced its solar roof tiles in more details and started taking orders yesterday. Some were surprised by the price and the warranty, which Tesla says is good for the tiles as long as the house stands and it guarantees 30 years for power generation.

It’s a bold statement. They developed a new glass to make the tiles stronger and they are using new solar cells developed with Panasonic, but what is less understood is the technology to interconnect all those tiles, which would presumably be more expensive than regular tiles and more difficult to install.
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Tesla released today all the information to order its new solar roof tiles products – starting with the smooth black glass tiles and the textured glass tiles, as reported earlier today.

Of course, the most important information that people were waiting for is price. CEO Elon Musk first hinted that it would be cheaper than a regular roof after accounting for energy savings, and later said that Tesla’s solar roof could cost less than a regular roof – even before energy production.

Tesla pretty much delivered on both depending on how you look at it.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced this morning that the company will open orders for the first solar roof tiles today:

Tesla solar glass roof orders open this afternoon. I think it will be great. More in about 10 hours …

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 10, 2017

It will start with the Black glass smooth tiles and the textured glass tiles. Other styles will follow next year.
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Tesla released its first quarter 2017 financial results and shareholders letter today. In the letter, the company gave an update on its plans for Model 3 production and Solar Roof tiles production.

The company says that it plans to start the ” pilot manufacturing” of the first types of tiles during the current quarter (within two months) at their Fremont facility and move to volume production at Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo “shortly” thereafter.
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We received a lot of messages over the weekend about “Tesla delaying the solar roof”. It seems to be originating from an article by Business Insider titled: “Tesla just delayed the roll-out of its solar roof” based on comments made by Elon Musk at TED last Friday, but his comment was misinterpreted by the publication.

Tesla is still planning to launch the first solar roof tiles this summer and the rollout hasn’t changed.
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While Tesla acquired SolarCity over 5 months ago, it focused on keeping “business as usual” and it only recently started absorbing the solar installer more aggressively into its operations.

Now we learn that the company is shutting down its door-to-door solar sales operations, which has over 1,000 salespeople, in order to integrate the solar offering into Tesla’s own sale channels, mainly its stores and online.
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The attention around Tesla’s solar products is mostly focused on its solar roof tiles, but those address only a new segment in the market – the new roof segment. Tesla is also trying to innovate for homeowners who don’t need a new roof, but who still want to generate their own solar energy.

This weekend, Tesla updated the ‘Energy’ section of its website to unveil new pictures – see above and below – of a new exclusive solar panel made by Panasonic. Electrek has also learned some details about this new product that will apparently shape the future of the company’s offering in the residential solar industry.
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Tesla already started gathering a list of people interested in their new ‘solar roof tiles’ since the launch of the new product line last November, but now they are about ready to start taking orders.

CEO Elon Musk confirmed today that they plan to open the order book next month.
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After the Model 3, Tesla’s ‘solar roof’ is probably the company’s most anticipated product of 2017, which brings some scrutiny to its plans for production – not unlike the Model 3’s production program.

The recent release of information from Tesla and Panasonic led to some confusion over the production of the product at Gigafactory 2, which the company is now clarifying.
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In order to bring to market its new series of ‘Solar Roof’ products, Tesla announced last year that they are bringing together a lot of technologies under one roof at their newly acquired factory in Buffalo, now known as ‘Gigafactory 2‘. It includes tech developed in-house by Tesla, some tech by Panasonic, and tech from SolarCity and its subsidiaries.

The deal is somewhat complicated with a lot of moving parts, which now clearly shows why Elon Musk wanted Tesla to acquire SolarCity since it will simplify the complicated partnership.
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