It is of course exactly the right comparison. They are two solutions that offer exactly the same outcome, a roof of some other sort and solar from some other solution compared to a roof tile. There are factors such as home resale, costs, lifespan etc but at the end of the day you have an expensive roof and solar power. … You don't even have to have the solar system on your own property, you can buy solar power from a utility scale solar farm. If that power is 10x cheaper than solar roof power why buy a solar roof?
If cost of the power were the sole factor then sure. And if that were true, the residential solar market in general and in particular the retrofit rooftop solar market would be almost nothing and utility-scale would be overwhelmingly dominant, except in niche cases where somehow the cost to the consumer is less than the cost of utility scale solar. But it’s not. Per IEA data, only two-thirds of the solar PV market globally is utility-scale, with the rest split between commercial and residential (
link).
People want home solar for all kinds of reasons and often are willing to pay extra for it. For example, a lot of people think the Tesla Solar Roof looks very cool and will impress other people.
Solar roof is just not competitive.
People are still buying and there’s still a long order backlog for Tesla to work through while figuring out how to make installation easier and cut costs. Give it time.
Tesla cars (before pandemic) were competitive with high end models with which they competed. Maybe a small premium but then you could feel good and do good.
Tesla cars are even more competitive than ever right now. Have you looked at the rising prices, sales volume, market share and order lead times? Tesla now leads the American luxury car market segment in unit sales by a large and growing margin while earning much more profit per car than anyone except Ferrari. Tesla is arguably a quasi-monopoly in the USA, especially with around 90% of customers expressing interest in buying only Tesla cars ever again.
4 years ago they not only shorted the solar solutions and threw it in a closet but they forgot they had locked it in the closet and then forgot what closet. Then they found it and raised the price while alternatives had fallen. It is not just solar roof it is panels as well, they are losing marketshare while others are growing and making profits.
Explained in the Q4 ‘17 report:
“We also deployed 87 MW of energy generation systems in Q4, which is 20% less than Q3 2017. Solar MW deployed declined as volumes continue to be impacted by our decision to close certain sales channels earlier this year and to focus on projects with better margins. In addition, solar deployments were affected by the short supply of Powerwalls for customers who wanted solar plus Powerwall in their house. While volumes may continue to be impacted by these factors over the near-term, we expect growth to resume later this year.”
And in Q1 ‘18:
“We also deployed 76 MW of solar energy generation systems in Q1. Cash and loan system sales made up 66% of residential deployments in the quarter, up from 31% in Q1 2017 and 9% in Q1 2016. Due to higher upfront cash sales, lower emphasis on less profitable commercial projects and consolidation of our sales channels, our solar business had slightly positive cash flow throughout 2017. We are expecting cash flow from our solar business to remain at this level in the first half of 2018 and then improve significantly thereafter.
Solar deployments have declined over the last few quarters due in large part to our strategic decision to shutter certain sales channels and market segments. These decisions had a negative impact on our deployments but created a positive impact on our cash generation. Furthermore, a significant part of our customer base is waiting for a Powerwall before getting their solar panels installed. We continue to prioritize Powerwall deliveries when they are sold together with our retrofit solar panels, and this should have a positive impact on our solar deployments in upcoming quarters.”
Then in Q2 ‘18 they lost sales volume from switching the sales channel solely to Tesla showrooms and the website in exchange for cutting customer acquisition costs dramatically. This was a time when Tesla’s free cash flow was under enormous stress and the company was in danger of going bankrupt. Solar was the least of their worries.
At the current trajectory Tesla may exit the solar install market in a couple of years.
Lol wut? Wanna bet on that?
Have you even looked at the trajectory or read the quarterly reports? Solar deployments have doubled since 2019 despite now being almost entirely cash orders and Solar Roof deployments tripled in 2021.
“Solar deployments were 345 MW in 2021, increasing by 68% YoY, with cash/loan purchases accounting for nearly all solar deployments. Solar Roof deployments nearly tripled YoY in 2021 and continued to grow sequentially in Q4. We are making further cost improvements, particularly on installation, to increase energy profitability.”
The storage market is just a bit mind boggling. To be market leader and then just completely atrophy for 4-5 years is bizarre.
It is neither mind-boggling nor bizarre whatsoever. Once again, Tesla management explicitly has said multiple times that they hamstrung growth of the energy storage business because of allocating finite cell supply (and since 2020, finite chip supply) to vehicles instead of Powerwalls and Megapacks. Vehicle demand has surprised them and they make far more profit per kWh on cars than on energy storage while also gathering data from a bigger vehicle fleet for driving FSD progress which they’ve said is the top priority for the mission of the company. They also were busy quietly building the world’s largest factory for utility-scale batteries without telling anybody what they were doing. It’s just basic economic decision-making in the face of scarcity.
Like posting they made a million 4680 cells in February. Not a million a day...a million up to that point in time. That announcement was not great, it was troubling and pointed to severe (unexpected) difficulties with the 4680 ramp.
That is not a deduction that can be confidently made from the public information.
Drew specifically stated that they are ramping 4680 production slowly and deliberately with a lot of engineering downtime to revise the line, change machinery, etc in order to improve cost, yield and throughput to prepare for volume production later this year. Chips are the limiting factor right now, not batteries. Drew said that existing stockpiles of cells plus continued shipments from suppliers exceeds Tesla’s ability to use the cells currently. Drew and Elon have expressed confidence that 4680 volume production will be rolling later in 2022. If the ramp is actually having severe difficulties with no clear path to resolution in time for meeting cell needs by 2023, then that would mean they’re either totally clueless or flat out lying.
In fact, we don’t even know if Tesla is
attempting to maximize total 4680 cell production right now. They might have been spending most of the last several quarters running the line only long enough to gather sufficient data for the next round of design iteration.
We do know that initial 4680 production hasn’t gone totally smoothly but we do not have clear evidence of severe problems and management has said the problems and optimizations will be ready in time for late 2022.
They don't have the batteries. Huwai has the batteries and chips. LG has them. Lots of others have them. Half a billion in megapacks is nothing when the demand is magnitudes of order above that.
Tesla’s Q4 ‘21 report shows that energy storage deployments have increased 10x between 2017 and 2021.
They are ramping a 40 GWh Megapack factory right now which will do another 11x jump from their production rate over 2021, and that’s assuming the nominal production capacity isn’t sandbagged like the “500k+” number for Giga Shanghai.
They say Megapack deliveries will double, triple or quadruple in 2022 alone as production grows at Lathrop.
Again, Tesla has chips and batteries, but they’re putting most of them in cars on purpose. To my knowledge, LG and Huawei don’t have products to put chips and batteries in that get 30% gross margin and collect critical data for autonomous driving development.
Tesla used to be exciting and interesting and the products released had the real potential to change the world. With the exception of auto that no longer seems to be the case at all.
Ok
Even in Auto they have raised prices to such an extent that they are going to be unaffordable to the general market, it is now a pure luxury product. Longer term as EV solutions role out (and they are rolling out) Tesla used car market will have challenges.
Yet market share is growing and the order backlog is longer than ever. People are stretching to buy Teslas and sacrificing elsewhere in their budgets to get one. With the incredible resale value the depreciation is almost negligible after multiple years of ownership, and the LFP powertrains as well as the nickel 4680 powertrains should have the long-awaited million-mile life.
Even now a bolt at $20k less than a model 3 is a price point that makes one pause.
Not really. Bolt sales volume is anemic. GM sells like 2 or 3 thousand Bolts per month, almost certainly with negative gross margins at the current price.
GM has done nothing to indicate they know how to make a reliable BEV.
One could say this change is snobbish, but honestly I approve. You can test-drive a base model and the Plaid is... faster.
www.pv-magazine.com
www.alsetinc.com
