{"id":594958,"date":"2026-08-25T00:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/594958\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T00:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T00:12:09","slug":"tesla-ditches-solar-roof-and-embraces-regular-solar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/594958\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla ditches solar roof \u2014 and embraces regular solar\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

A thousand solar roofs per week. That was the pace Elon Musk predicted Tesla would install its electricity-generating roof tiles in 2020, more than three years after he unveiled<\/a> the product to great fanfare on the set of the TV show Desperate Housewives.<\/p>\n

That estimate fell flat. Tesla managed to install a\u00a0total of just 3,000 solar roofs in the U.S. by the end of 2022 and now appears to be scrapping the product altogether, Electrek reports<\/a>. As of Monday, the solar roof was no longer featured among the home energy products on Tesla\u2019s website. Tesla did not return requests for comment.<\/p>\n

The official demise of Tesla\u2019s supposedly transformative solar roof comes as the company is back in the news for a\u00a0fresh round of eye-popping claims about its solar ambitions. In July, Tesla indicated interest<\/a> in building a $10.1 billion solar cell factory in Texas. Earlier this year, Musk declared<\/a> that Tesla will work with SpaceX to manufacture 100\u00a0gigawatts of integrated solar panels \u2014 meaning each major step of the supply chain. That\u2019s far more than the entire country makes or installs<\/a> annually.<\/p>\n

When Musk unveiled the solar roof, he was pitching Tesla investors to acquire rooftop solar leader SolarCity, of which he was the largest shareholder. By combining the talents of those two companies, he argued, they could build a\u00a0new kind of solar product to disrupt the two-step process of installing roofs and putting solar panels on top of them. The roof itself would contain the photovoltaic capability, while looking like high-end slate or\u00a0tile.<\/p>\n

As generally happens in the solar market, the specialty product underperformed mass-produced conventional panels. Tesla\u2019s solar roofs were far more expensive. They took longer than expected to install. In some cases, they warped or underproduced their nameplate capacity.<\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s solar roof didn\u2019t even crack 0.03% of the roofing market in 2022, and amounted to just 0.17% of the residential solar capacity installed that year, according to a\u00a02023 report<\/a> by data firm Wood Mackenzie.<\/p>\n

The product did, however, help secure Tesla shareholders\u2019 approval<\/a> of the SolarCity acquisition, which converted Musk\u2019s shares in that startup into Tesla stock. The rooftop solar business quietly declined<\/a> from there, and Tesla\u2019s solar performance never matched the company\u2019s market-leading achievements in electric vehicles and battery storage.<\/p>\n

Tesla was not alone in the solar roof space. GAF, a\u00a0major roofing company, launched its own nailable solar shingles<\/a> in 2022. In March 2024, it opened a\u00a0second factory, bringing its total<\/a> capacity to 300\u00a0megawatts, making it the \u200b\u201clargest producer of solar roofing in the world,\u201d per a\u00a0press release. But last December, \u200b\u201cin light of ongoing changes in the solar industry,\u201d GAF\u2019s energy division shuttered<\/a> its San Jose, California, headquarters, laid off 138 employees, and moved all operations to\u00a0Texas.<\/p>\n

Tesla\u2019s recent solar moves are fundamentally more modest than its once-grand plans for the solar\u00a0roof.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A thousand solar roofs per week. That was the pace Elon Musk predicted Tesla would install its electricity-generating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,85,46],"class_list":["post-594958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}