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Tesla's Solar Factory is Exporting Most of its Solar Cells

posted by martyb on Thursday May 16 2019, @06:29AM   
from the it's-over-MY-head dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Reuters:

The "great majority" of solar cells being produced at Tesla's factory in upstate New York are being sold overseas instead of being used in the company's trademark "Solar Roof" as originally intended, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.

The exporting underscores the depth of Tesla's troubles in the U.S. solar business, which the electric car maker entered in 2016 with its controversial $2.6 billion purchase of SolarCity.

Tesla has only sporadically purchased solar cells produced by its partner in the factory, Panasonic Corp, according to a Buffalo solar factory employee speaking on condition of anonymity. The rest are going largely to foreign buyers, according to a Panasonic letter to U.S. Customs officials reviewed by Reuters.

Tesla's solar cells are being bought, but not by Americans.

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Original Submission

• update this morning (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16 2019, @01:22PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 16 2019, @01:22PM (#844261)

  From the local Buffalo News,
  https://buffalonews.com/2019/05/15/tesla-is-adding-new-products-in-buffalo-as-its-solar-business-slumps/ [buffalonews.com]

  This is about the solar cell plant (not a battery plant). The facility was built by NY State and is used by both Tesla and Panasonic.

  ? There may be some confusion because the Buffalo "Riverbend" plant has also been called a "gigafactory", same name attached to the Nevada battery factory, but based on 1000 MW of yearly cell production capacity.

  "In addition to scaling production of Solar Roof, Tesla is also diversifying its presence in Buffalo by manufacturing and assembling Supercharger and energy storage components at Gigafactory 2," a Tesla spokeswoman said in a statement. "We’re committed to investing in Buffalo and the state, and the new power electronic lines will deliver more high tech jobs while supporting Tesla’s energy storage products and global Supercharging infrastructure."

  Tesla's employment in Buffalo easily topped its target of bringing 500 jobs here by the end of April. But Tesla will have a much harder task meeting its next employment goal, which will require it to roughly double its employment to 1,460 people between itself and Panasonic by the end of April 2020.

  "We are pleased that Tesla is reporting that it has exceeded its job and investment commitments, invested $381 million over the course of the project, and become host to nearly 800 full-time employees working at the manufacturing facility," said Pamm Lent, an Empire Development Corp. spokeswoman. "In the coming weeks, ESD will perform the necessary due diligence to verify the data provided by Tesla.”

  Doubling the Riverbend factory's employment will be a big challenge at a time when Tesla's solar energy business is shrinking – not growing – and the solar roof product that the company expects to account for much of Tesla's production in Buffalo is still being developed and tested.

  Tesla's first-quarter solar installations plunged by 38 percent from a year ago and are at their lowest level in more than five years. Not once since the fall of 2013 had Tesla – or SolarCity before it – installed less than 73 megawatts of solar generating capacity during a single quarter. In the first quarter of this year, it installed just 47 megawatts – less than a third of what it did during the same period just two years ago.

  That puts Tesla on pace for less than 200 megawatts of solar installations this year – just a fraction of the 1,000-megawatt production capacity of the Buffalo factory. In response, Tesla late last month said it was slashing the price of its residential rooftop solar systems in a bid to increase sales, while also limiting the sizes of its solar arrays to standardized increments and pushing customers to order online as a way of reducing costs.