While Tesla, more often than not, is associated with electric vehicles and the likes, the company has also quietly been running a solar roof tile business. And now, we finally have some more updates on that business, courtesy — once again — Elon Musk’s twitter handle.
Called the ‘Solarglass’ by Tesla, Musk, in a series of tweets, updated about the current stage of Solarglass installations in the US and other plans. When asked about installations in the Bay Area by one Twitter user, Musk stated that “Many Bay Area installations are ongoing now”. In reply to another tweet, he mentioned that the company is planning on expanding this part of the Tesla business to China and Europe soon.
Many Bay Area installations are ongoing now
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2020
Europe & China timing will be announced soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2020
Four months ago, Musk had mentioned that Tesla would begin installations in the “coming weeks” and that it hopes to drive up production volumets to as many as 1,000 new roofs per week.
In fact, when you do go the Tesla Solarglass site, you can see Belgium and a few other european locations in selection options.
Tesla’s solarglass roof tiles are basically solar panels but very finely integrated with your house roof. They are designed in a manner to replicate house roofs, and generate energy at the same time. The first such tiles were unveiled by the company in 2016, with pre-orders for the same opening up in 2017. Updates on them however have been fairly limited, with these tweets from Musk being a major one for quite some time.
Musk also mentioned that the ‘April Talk’ that will have updates from Tesla and will be held in the company’s gigafactory in New York, will also talk about Solarglass.
Tesla April company talk will be from our Giga New York factory, where we make SolarGlass & several other products. Will also offer customer & media tours.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2020
In terms of an estimated pricing, Tesla currently offers two options. There is a normal Solarglass roof which comes integrated with Solar and has the basic solarglass design. For a home with 2000 sq.ft. roof area and capacity of 10kW solar, this basic option could cost somewhere around $33,950. Next is a premium option. This premium option consists of concrete tiles with solar panels aesthetically attached to them. For similar home roof and capacity specifics, this could cost $43,790.
