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Solar Roof, big price increase
- Thread starter nicholb
- Start date
I think Tesla is looking at this as a multi-billion dollar conglomerate with a lot of irons in the fire. Some like SpaceX with huge cash burn rates and a potentially very large IPO this year.
I expect many of Elon's wild hair projects to be gone soon. I would not be surprised if the Boring Company shuts down, and the Roadster gets a large price bump to make it more exclusive (and marginally profitable), and the Semi get scaled way back or killed.
IMO, we haven't really seen any labor shortage for medium skill stuff. But if the Tesla Solar roof needs high-skill, then yeah I'm sure there's a labor shortage simply because it's hard to find people qualified. There's always a shortage of high skill licensed workers. But you wouldn't have 8 high-skilled on prem full time on a project.
(still personal opinion posts, not representing anyone but myself here)
I didnt say anything myself about running a social media campaign, thats not my style... although people have gotten change to unpopular opinions by doing just that. We just have a difference of opinion, which has happened fairly often so its not a surprise to me (lol). I get what you are saying, but I personally believe you can really see how someone (company or otherwise) will treat you in times of crisis vs times everything is great.
I didnt say tesla "had" to absorb any of this, I am saying they must have decided they couldnt, because the fall out is going to be fairly large, and reach farther than just people who were buying solar roofs.
If they HAD covered it, and simply raised pricing across the board as of, say last friday, then all these people would be ecstatic that they got a deal, and likely tesla customers for life. As it is, not only will most of them not be tesla customers, they will tell everyone they know (verbally and many of them online) about how they were "screwed" even though most of them are out a bunch of time for the most part, and not some huge dollar amount.
Time will tell whether they made the right decision. I personally dont think so, but thats just my personal opinion.
100% agree. Could use the support on social media or direct to Tesla. Even just as a fellow Tesla fan and loyal customer... hopefully that’s enough for Elon.
This is exactly what I thought. Its not that I am trying to take the Tesla fanboy side, actually, I am on the side of all early adopters, and everyone getting a solar roof now is an early adopter.
But it really looks like a massive mistake was made when Tesla was pricing this line of products. Its not just that cost of some material went up, its that they figured it would take (a) a couple of days, max, to do on average most solar panel and powerwall projects, and (b) a week, maybe plus a day or so, for a solar roof project.
If "a week" turns into "a month," as some posters here have said, the pricing is unsustainable. It almost seems like Tesla went forward for a year or so, seeing if they could get down to a better trained set of crews, and failed.
All I can say is my solar panel and powewall project went in exactly as predicted, although waiting for permits, inspections and a main panel upgrade took longer, the actual product and install went completely as planned.
One person, 1500 sq.ft., one day, for a roof in reasonable condition, seems about right to me for asphalt shingles, based on the few roofs that I have done. The devil is in the details, of course. I think roofing is one of those glory jobs in construction, like drywalling. You go from looking like not much to wow very quickly. Like drywalling, I think it is more skilled than it looks.
A crew of 8 x 40hrs x 3wks x $15/hr, call it $14.4k, but again depends on your labor market, and the skill level of your crew.
For a company as large as Tesla, I find it hard to believe that it was worth the hit on goodwill not to fulfill the contracts.
Best of luck,
BG
I would not want any 15 dollar an hour folks that were just picked up at home depot working on my roof, or solar!! Not do it right and the water damage would be, .......
I know from being on the forum since ordering our first Tesla 12/31/16 that I’ve seen Tesla make financial concessions on car pricing and even on solar panels and PW combos. I got in on the 1/2 off option upgrades sale last spring on my car and was surprised by us receiving reduced panel pricing and their honoring our original PW bundle pricing when we asked about ordering a third PW months after the fact even though PW prices had gone up since then. I was shocked actually by some of the concessions car owners got after the fact, which personally I wouldn’t have granted. The fact they aren’t moving on this tells me this probably involves sums of money too large to do so. One solar roof can be like the price of a car or several. I feel badly for people who were expecting their installs at their contract price and feel badly for Tesla to have gotten into this situation. Feel for the advisors having to field all the calls. Not good for anyone and I really don’t look at Tesla as some disreputable company who doesn’t try to do right by their customers. Seen too much to the contrary to believe that.
Yeah $15/hr is minimum wage. And that's without payroll taxes, benefits, insurance, whatever for this labor.
The best thing to do, for sure, would be to fulfill existing contracts, and its frankly not that hard to figure out which contracts are actually "existing."Yep, we just have a different opinion on this
If you had just put $100 down, no physical inspection, no loan docs, well, that's not the same as when you get the full contact.
I am still rooting for a course correction on this one, how many solar roof projects under contract can there be in this stage? If its 1,000 (I am just making that up, by the way), then if Tesla had to eat $30,000 per job that would be what, ........ well, ok, that's $30 million.
Well, now we are down to "is $30 million a lot?"
Yeah, back on that issue where (edit sorry misspelled) SMAlset said I was being a cynic... someone at Tesla knows the entire status of the pipeline along with all the latest costs they're seeing through their subs and costs of those precious solar shingles.
Someone crunched the numbers; put it in a package; got their butt handed to them for doing the math wrong; went back to re-assess; found some more costs; updated their deck; probably got yelled at some more; then they decided to do a blanket rip-job. Of course, not before consulting with in-house counsel to see what leg the customers could stand on. At which point they learned the customer may be right, but they're still a putz without much standing. Then someone sends out an email on Saturday because that seems nice.
Remember, the $40/hr I was quoting was just the burdened labor for a project where there was no additional profit margin; it was just to get the labor with direct burden of that labor itself. If Tesla has to go through subs, they're probably paying $60 to $80... or more if these fancy shingles are really that hard to mess with.
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Doubtful this didn't get run by high ups and counsel. As it is Tesla loses out on permit fees and all the labor that went into the design work, house visits, material ordering etc that’s gone on up to this point if a person backs out and a refund gets issued. I don’t think the Cities will refund the permit fees.
Well, this is not an impossible course correction to make. I wonder if this is the sort of thing that makes it all the way to Musk himself?
I mean, you can imagine the goodwill if Tesla blatently, obviously, decides to honor a bunch of contracts and lose $30 million just to keep moving forward on the cause (if you will)?
That still leaves the problem of the fact that apparently the entire solar roof program is mispriced and they may not have actually figured out how to install them at a price that's competitive, but that's under the live to fight another day file.
Yep. This is why I think we as Tesla owners can succeed it doesn’t make much sense from a business or customer service point. Hopefully everyone is tweeting Elon.
Agreed - the physical shingle maybe viable (like it works, is technologically feasible, and can be produced at scale); but the actual product (which includes the labor to install, service required, and all the other things to make it "work" from a consumer standpoint) may not be ready.
So they'll do what they should done in the beginning... they'll price it where it would still have some deep-pocketed early adopters, but nowhere near the reach that they saw over the last year or so.
Tesla wouldn't be the first company to do this either. Like, I've seen it numerous times already. What blows my mind is how most companies that do what Tesla did with Solar Roof contracts usually gets the company absolutely roasted. The reputational damage is massive to stick it to your most loyal clients in a deliberate way like this.
But Tesla seems to survive their increasingly negative service and consumer perception issues simply because their Tech is so good. Very interesting case study regardless how this pans out. I still hope Tesla balks if the press gets ugly enough about it and goes back to honoring their commitments. But I feel it's unlikely.
One important factor to consider is that the "victims" in this case don't really draw much sympathy from the broad public. If you mess with orphan kids or the impoverished, the media will be all over it. But mess with some luxury product clientele? Just some tiny violins.
In my opinion, I don't think Tesla's "customer service" is that much of a problem, I view it as an attempt to revolutionize the way interactions and orders are handled, with the resulting growing pains.
Before this week, I thought Tesla had one problem, now they may have two.
The existing problem, for another forum, was what sort of rebate or something ought to be given for early FSD buyers when expected features did not materialize on the time-table Musk publicly stated. That's a tough one, becuase the progress, or lack of it, on FSD is a bit of a sore subject due to the ton of criticism from shorts sellers, etc. A rebate in this case is almost a public admission of failure.
This is the second, new problem, but easier to address. If the pricing for the first couple of years of solar roofs was off, its only money to fulfil existing contracts at a loss. Compared to the FSD problem, its solvable and wouldn't harm the company.
That's my thought anyway.
Before this week, I thought Tesla had one problem, now they may have two.
The existing problem, for another forum, was what sort of rebate or something ought to be given for early FSD buyers when expected features did not materialize on the time-table Musk publicly stated. That's a tough one, becuase the progress, or lack of it, on FSD is a bit of a sore subject due to the ton of criticism from shorts sellers, etc. A rebate in this case is almost a public admission of failure.
This is the second, new problem, but easier to address. If the pricing for the first couple of years of solar roofs was off, its only money to fulfil existing contracts at a loss. Compared to the FSD problem, its solvable and wouldn't harm the company.
That's my thought anyway.
Completely agree. Hopefully everyone is tweeting Elon and they wake up.
I’d assume a ton of the roof folks are repeat loyal customers...
Tesla Energy's profit for 2020 was less than 1%, I think they grossly underpriced solar roof. My roof install was not a month, but it was 1 day tear-down with a sub-contractor, another 4 days roof prep with underlayment, flashings and new roof vents with another sub-contractor. Then 15 to 13 crews for 4 days for the roof and PWs install. I don't see how they can make any money with the old pricing. True, they should consider honoring the contracted price for customers that have signed the purchase agreement, but with the install queue out to at least 6 months, I think it could be more than a few thousand customers on the waiting list. If I were one of the unfortunate ones I would try to work out a compromise if I want the roof, or go with a regular roof and panels, or sue away if so desired.
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