Two announcements regarding Tesla have caught my attention since I wrote my earlier blog about Tesla being a 25-bagger about a month ago.
Solar Shingles – Now Ready to Order
The journey to MEGA (Make Earth Green Again) took another giant step forward a week ago as Tesla started taking orders for its aesthetic solar shingles.

Solar Single Home from Tesla’s Website
We will begin selling roof tiles that convert solar energy into electricity in April, CEO Elon Musk said.
The goal is to make solar roofs that look better than a normal roof, generate electricity, last longer, have better insulation, and have a total cost that is less than a normal roof plus the cost of generating electricity. “So why would you buy anything else?” asks Musk.
Orders are now being taken for these shingles for the first time indicating that the product has tamed the technical hurdles that has kept everyone else out of this market and, in fact, is tooling up for mass production. These hurdles have included low electric yields, high heat production, messy connections and interfaces and lack of storage for intermittent power production. Also unsightly tiles and uneconomical production and distribution. Formidable barriers that it is now claimed have been overcome.
The first general announcement for this product was made last last year when Tesla bought SolarCity for $2.6 billion – that everybody bemoaned as an outrageous price. But the grand vision of uniting the three big components of a green energy planet is now beginning to take shape and we’re stunned by its audacity. The three big components are:
- Energy Generation
- Energy Storage
- Green Transportation
Watch the video at this Tesla site to see the grand vision and how technology, engineering, aesthetics and efficiency are being combined to change the paradigm.
Important details about the solar shingles are still awaited. Like the price.
Musk says the solar roof will be priced similarly to a regular roof, plus the cost of electricity, but what he means by “regular roof” hasn’t been defined. He may have in mind expensive “regular” roofs, like ceramic or concrete tiles, which can cost ten to twenty times normal asphalt roofing.
But you never know.
Lyndon Rive, SolarCity’s former CEO, said on a Nov. 1 call: “we think we can get to that price point of 40 cents a Watt over time in large scale” for the solar cells. That would be quite impressive because today even stand-alone solar panels are not that cheap. Still lots of uncertainty there. Lyndon Rive is certainly talking only about the electricity add-on part of the cost not the full shingle cost.
According to Bloomberg:
Make no mistake: The new shingles will still be a premium product, at least when they first roll out. The terra cotta and slate roofs Tesla mimicked are among the most expensive roofing materials on the market—costing as much as 20 times more than cheap asphalt shingles.
Much of the cost savings Musk is anticipating comes from shipping the materials. Traditional roofing materials are brittle, heavy, and bulky. Shipping costs are high, as is the quantity lost to breakage. The new tempered-glass roof tiles, engineered in Tesla’s new automotive and solar glass division, weigh as little as a fifth of current products and are considerably easier to ship, Musk said.
I read somewhere that Tesla/SolarCity has set up a special glass division for research and manufacture of beautiful, strong, light and shatter-proof roof tiles.