All posts tagged: tesla solar roof

Tesla killing Solar Roof is leaving installers with six-figure losses

Tesla killing Solar Roof is leaving installers with six-figure losses

Published by skeptic

Tesla’s abrupt decision to kill its Solar Roof has left the third-party contractors who sold and installed the product absorbing the fallout — including some who told Electrek they sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into the program and now have little to show for it. Tesla stopped supplying the solar tiles in August, notifying its network of certified installers that it would ship only conventional solar panels going forward. A product few could sell, killed overnight The scale of the retreat is striking. Over roughly seven years, 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. We reported last month that Tesla discontinued the Solar Roof after deciding internally that the product “is not financially viable”. The tesla.com/solarroof page now redirects to the company’s solar panel page, and “Solar Roof” has been stripped from the Energy navigation menu. It was the quiet end of a product that …

Tesla discontinues its Solar Roof tiles, not economically viable

Tesla discontinues its Solar Roof tiles, not economically viable

Published by skeptic

Tesla has discontinued the Solar Roof, its solar-tile roofing product, Electrek has learned. The company has told third-party installers that it will no longer supply solar roof tiles going forward, only solar panels, according to two sources close to the program. Two sources confirm the end of the Solar Roof Two sources close to the program confirmed to Electrek that Tesla has informed its network of certified third-party installers that solar roof tiles are no longer available to order, and that the company will supply only conventional solar panels moving forward. One of the sources said that internally, Tesla has concluded that the product is not financially viable. Advertisement – scroll for more content Tesla’s own website corroborates the wind-down. The company’s long-standing Solar Roof page, tesla.com/solarroof, now redirects to tesla.com/solarpanels, and “Solar Roof” has been removed entirely from the Energy navigation menu, which today lists only Solar Panels, Powerwall, and Megapack. The changes were live as of today. Tesla Solar Roof Tiles webpage redirects to its solar panel page The move formalizes a retreat …

Musk abandoned his own ‘solar electric economy’ to burn gas for an AI chatbot no one uses

Musk abandoned his own ‘solar electric economy’ to burn gas for an AI chatbot no one uses

Published by skeptic

Elon Musk spent years telling the world that solar power was the obvious answer to Earth’s energy needs — that a small patch of desert could power the entire United States. Now, he’s burning millions of tons of fossil fuels to run an AI chatbot that has lost 60% of its downloads, selling the unused compute to a company he called “misanthropic and evil” three months ago, and pitching space-based solar panels right as SpaceX files for a $2 trillion IPO. The contradictions are stacking up faster than xAI’s unpermitted gas turbines. ‘A small corner of Nevada’: Musk’s solar vision In July 2017, Musk stood before the National Governors Association and made the case for solar with the kind of clarity that made him an icon of the clean energy movement. “If you wanted to power the entire US with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” he said. …

Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

Published by skeptic

Tesla’s Solar Roof was supposed to revolutionize residential solar. Elon Musk unveiled the product in 2016 with the promise of beautiful solar tiles that would replace your entire roof — and he set a target of 1,000 new Solar Roofs per week by the end of 2019. Nearly a decade later, Tesla has installed roughly 3,000 Solar Roof systems total, stopped reporting deployment numbers, and is now quietly pivoting to conventional solar panels. The gap between Tesla’s Solar Roof promise and reality is one of the most stark examples of unfulfilled ambitions in the company’s history — and it has left thousands of customers stuck with an expensive product that Tesla appears to have deprioritized. The promise vs. the numbers When Musk first presented the Solar Roof in October 2016, he positioned it as a cornerstone of Tesla’s energy future. The pitch was compelling: solar tiles indistinguishable from premium roofing materials, integrated with Powerwalls for whole-home energy independence. Musk claimed it would cost less than a conventional roof plus traditional solar panels. Tesla acquired SolarCity …

Tesla reaches 10 billion FSD miles — is there’s a magical milestone for autonomy

Tesla reaches 10 billion FSD miles — is there’s a magical milestone for autonomy

Published by skeptic

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) fleet has crossed the 10 billion mile mark, according to the automaker’s updated safety page. It’s the threshold that CEO Elon Musk himself set earlier this year as the data milestone needed for “safe unsupervised” driving. The achievement represents a massive acceleration in data collection — the fleet was logging roughly 29 million miles per day by late April, up from 14 million miles per day at the start of the year. But hitting a round number doesn’t mean Tesla is about to flip a switch on Level 4 autonomy. A goalpost Musk set himself In January 2026, after Tesla failed to deliver unsupervised FSD by the end of 2025 as promised, Musk stated that the company needed approximately 10 billion miles of real-world driving data to achieve safe unsupervised self-driving. That figure itself was a moved goalpost — he had previously indicated 6 billion miles would be sufficient. Tesla’s safety page now reports one major collision per 5.3 million miles under FSD (Supervised), compared to one per 660,000 miles for …