Tesla's Solar Roof Pricing Is Cheap Enough to Catch Fire
Tesla Inc. has begun taking $1,000 deposits for its remarkable solar roof tiles—to be delivered this summer at a price point that could expand the U.S. solar market.
Tesla will begin with production of two of the four styles it unveiled in October: a smooth glass and a textured glass tile. 1 Roofing a 2,000 square-foot home in New York state—with 40 percent coverage of active solar tiles and battery backup for night-time use—would cost about $50,000 after federal tax credits and generate $64,000 in energy over 30 years, according to Tesla's website calculator.
That's more expensive upfront than a typical roof, but less expensive than a typical roof with traditional solar and back-up batteries. The warranty is for the lifetime of your home.
"The pricing is better than I expected, better than everyone expected," said Hugh Bromley, a solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance who had been skeptical about the potential market impact of the new product. Tesla's cost for active solar tiles is about $42 per square foot, "significantly below" BNEF's prior estimate of $68 per square foot, Bromley said. Inactive tiles will cost $11 per square foot.
Also: Elon Musk has discovered a new passion in life — and it could be Tesla's best product yet
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @03:33PM (1 child)
Nice post, just a couple of comments.
Just replaced our roof with traditional asphalt shingles in the NE USA. Three bedroom suburban ranch with garage on the end, cost was $12,000 for a very nice job, including rehanging the wonky gutters. We didn't go with the lowest bidder--got references and checked quality. This probably has 20-30 year life expectancy. The solar tiles (glass or ceramic) are much more durable...but maybe not in our case, since the house has big trees nearby that might eventually fall on the roof?
> This is similar to the way he understood that in order to make electric cars cool, you had to make a
> high performance awe inspiring electric car instead of fiddle-farting around with ugly glorified golf carts.
While Musk took it to volume production, there were a number of earlier high performance electric car prototypes and short runs. Probably the most influential was the tzero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero [wikipedia.org] but there were several others even earlier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @05:31PM
At least you don't live in Florida.