Tesla’s Elon Musk notes that there are about 4 million to 5 million new roofs in the United States each year. What he plans is that, starting from zero next summer, some small share, and one-day, an increasingly large percentage of those roofs will be Tesla solar roofs.
On Friday, Musk–clearly defining the tie between Tesla and its Solar City sibling company–introduced a series of new solar roofing tile styles that would pair up with Tesla’s new Powerwall 2, a solar system capable of powering a two-bedroom home’s lights, electric sockets and refrigerator for a full day.
The game-change is this: if you add up the cost of installing the solar roof tile and the $5,000 Powerwall 2 storage units, the total is priced to be less expensive than putting on a new conventional roof and paying for electricity.
“The goal is to make solar roofs that look better than normal roofs, generate electricity, last longer, have better insulation, and actually have an installed cost that is less than the cost of a normal roof plus the cost of electricity,” Musk notes at Friday’s unveiling in Universal Studios in Los Angeles. “With houses and cars, you’ve got the whole equation,” he says, an equation that attempts to accelerate the pace of transfer to sustainable energies and a slowdown of the “vertical climb” of CO2 levels.
If there were any doubts that Tesla is a company in the housing materials business community, this should be the end of those doubts.
Musk demonstrated four relatively standard style quartz-based roofing tiles during the unveiling on Friday, Textured Glass, Slate Glass, Tuscan Glass, and Smooth Glass. The aesthetic look of each would comply with most master-planned community design guidelines and local jurisdictional rules for streetscapes.
The business model intention, says Musk, is for “everybody to have a solar roof.” It seems he and his team at Tesla are taking the same approach on residential solar as they’ve taken on individual transportation. “There are plenty of good car companies out there making really good cars. What there wasn’t was a good electric car, which is what we did.”
So, starting next summer, in good time for the push, particularly in California toward Net Zero Energy home construction, there will be a better, more aesthetically pleasing solar roofing option for people. The only caveat may have to be, “Tesla car does not come included with the purchase.”
