100% agree. They need to stop acting like some startup struggling to survive and not take a giant $*&t on their most loyal customers. Really sucks to invest so much money in a company's products and then need to tell your friends that they really can't be trusted in the slightest. This isn't even the first time Tesla has straight up lied to me about something, but at least before they were genuinely struggling to survive.Did anyone bother to listen to the earning call? Elon dodged the question about the 1000 roofs per week figure that was quoted back in early 2020. Said despite the price increase demand still is strong and outpaces supply. Elon said they found they made "significant mistakes in assessing" in assessing the difficulty of building roofs due to the complexity of roofs. He said some roofs are 2-3 easier than other roofs and you can't have a one size fits all product and that some roofs cost Tesla 2-3x as much to build. Said "what we cannot due is lose a massive amount of money." He also mentioned some absolute B$3# about some roofs being "rotted out" or lacking the structural integrity to support the roof.
1.) "rotted out roofs" and/or roofs without sufficient structure are precisely why there is language in everyone's contract that protects Tesla against "unforeseen conditions at the installation location." Nobody in here expects Tesla to absorb the cost of repairing a rotted out or otherwise structurally deficient building. And based on reports we have seen in here with people who have had inspections these massive price hikes are not in anyway related to fixing "rotted out roofs" or roofs lacking structural integrity.
2. Regarding Elon's comment on the "significant mistakes" regarding assessing complexity and thus difficulty in installing the roofs... So you expect us to believe that a company with the financial and intellectual resources of Tesla, one of the most innovative and data driven company in the world with some of the most brilliant engineers, in the world needed half a decade of product development to figure out that residential roofs have a wide range of complexity and variety? Isn't this precisely why the V1 roof rollout was so slow and the product was so expensive? Isn't this precisely what their engineers carefully looked at when designing V3? Isn't this precisely why V3 was going to be so fast and cheap to implement and that it would allow for 1000 roofs per week? Do you guys remember the press conference back in 2019 on the V3 roof and about how everything was carefully combed through and simplified in such a way as to easily install the roof in a day? And that this is why it took Tesla years of product development streamlining so as to get to the V3 roof? Are you really expecting us to believe that it took Tesla half a decade , multiple product revisions, and x amount of installs to figure out that their current cost estimate calculator was off by not 5% not 10% not 20% but 40-100%?? Why was there not careful analytics all along the way of roll out tracking each and every install with constant revisions in pricing so that Tesla would not get burned, but also, the customer would not get burned by breaking contractual agreements?
And ultimately there are people in here with a simple two plane roof, literally a piece of paper folded in half, the lowest complexity possible for any roof who still saw a 40%+ price hike. What about them???
3.) Forcing a power wall with every solar roof + greatly increased pricing. For some of us who have carefully ran the TOU numbers a power wall may not even break even over the warrantied life of the power wall. So why would we pay for it outside of backup power? I'd do much better investing that 10K over 10 years. Plu some people already have generators for backup power. The solar roof was originally advertised to be a no brainer for people who needed a new premium roof and solar. It was supposed to be cheaper than that but obviously more expensive than solar alone. Now suddenly a premium roof + panels is significantly cheaper than a Telsa roof + mandatory powerwall. I can get a premium concrete tile roof that we know from the test of time will easily last 50+ years and solar system with the best hardware in the industry, Panasonic HIT ultra low degradation panels with some of the best temperature coefficient performance out there with a fully optimized array with micro inverters for around $35-45K for an average sized roof with a 6-8kw array. If you use a top quality comp shingle roof it's more like 25-35K. Now that roof will cost what 60-70K+ when you include a power wall? I'm sure there will be some very premium luxury buyers who can swallow that price tag but enough to install 1000+ roofs a week? I'm highly skeptical there are that many people ready to shell out that much for a solar glass roof + powerwall.
4.) Ultimately Tesla wasn't forced to engage in those contracts that they are now reneging on. Elon's tone in the conference call made it seem like Tesla was a victim and couldn't bare the burden of losing all that money. As stated above they had all the resources available over many years to really track down and nail down their cost so that they don't engage into thousands of losing contracts. Every company that is actively doing business and engaging in contracts is expected to do their due diligence and engage into the contract in good faith with the expectations that they will be able to fulfil them. As you can see from the testimony in this thread Tesla has left many loyal customers and fan boys out to pasture. I know my opinion of Tesla and Elon is now 180 degrees different from what it was a year ago.
Thoughts?