Tesla appears to be speeding up installations of its solar tile roofs in the San Francisco Bay area and will also roll out the same in Europe and China, according to CEO Elon Musk, who, in a series of tweets, provided the first substantial update since the company launched the third iteration of its product in October last year.
Tesla calls its solar tile roof the “Solarglass”, which is being produced at Tesla’s factory in Buffalo, N.Y. Musk announced in one of the tweets plans to host a “company talk” in April this year at the Buffalo factory, an event that will include media and customer tours of the facility.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment seeking more information about Solarglass, including how many installations have been made till now.
4 months ago, Musk said the company would begin Solarglass installations in the “coming weeks” and that it hopes to produce as many as 1,000 new roofs per week.
Tesla’s Solarglass is designed to look like normal roof tiles when installed while working as solar panels to generate power. Tesla first unveiled the solar tiles in 2016 and conducted trial installations and opened up for pre-orders in 2017.
In an earnings call last October, Musk suggested that the solar tiles were ready for widespread deployment, noting that “version 3 is finally ready for the big time.”
The solar tile roof will initially be offered in textured black, but Musk reiterated Monday plans to offer other color and finish variants “hopefully later this year.”
A pricing estimator on the Tesla website says a solar tile roof with 10 kW of solar on an average 2,000 square-foot home costs $42,500 before federal tax incentives. It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive.
