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Comment by irjustin | Hacker News Reader

The problem is pricing, which directly affects demand. Obviously, if there was demand, the factory would be humming.

$55k for a solar roof which is 2-3x a panel setup? This system is not 3x better and doesn't represent a fundamental shift (like Starlink).

There are lots of people who want solar, but my guess is very few are willing to pay even +25% to make it "look seamless", let alone 3x. That's the primary benefit, "looking seamless", and that's not a mass-market selling point. That's a luxury, so the market is tiny.

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Having seriously contemplated getting one of these roofs, the real problem was working with Tesla. Fine, Tesla sells cars with essentially no customer service. It’s a thing you order off a menu, and they make it and deliver it.

But a roof is fundamentally a custom installation. You need flashings. You need it to integrate with gutters. You need to make sure the thing is compatible with the roof slope. You may need penetrations. You need to have drawings and specs for the contractor and the structural engineer. You probably need a (correct!) permit drawing. Someone needs to answer the phone when the GC calls. And you need the thing installed, on time, competently, so the building can have a roof when it needs it.

Tesla is terrible at this. Any of a large number of roofers who sell products from various large and small roofing vendors can pull it off — it’s not hard, it’s not rocket science, but it requires an actual human who has volition. Maybe AI or really amazing construction software will do this some day, but not yet.

My parents have had endless problems due to their Tesla roof and regret ever buying it. Tesla’s response to their problems is slow to non-existent.

Having dealt with tesla with a car I would not expect good service from them for something like this.

I do not blame the employees, but I think if you have a tesla car you should have a "backup car" for when you have problems - even a flat tire.

I would not trust them for a solar project like this, unless I didn't live in the house and I had patience for project delays.

I have only experienced good stuff from Tesla service. I like the convenience of being able to request for a service appointment through the app and the response time was within an hour. Their mobile service also means I don’t need to drive to a service center on minor issues. I do live in California so not sure if it is different in other states or countries

I have a 2014 Model S, That just went out of warranty this past summer. For the first few years, maybe up to 2018, Tesla's customer service was amazing. After 2018 though getting even minor things fixed under warranty required multiple service center visits (literally took me four visits to get a tire pressure monitor battery replaced and re-paired to the car).

I'm dreading the next major thing that goes wrong too, now that the car is out of warranty and for the most part only Tesla can repair them.

They've stopped offering mobile service in my area (Northern Utah) and they've stopped offering loaner cars while performing repairs. Meaning dropping the car off and ruining someone else's morning so you can get a ride to work or home.

I love electric cars, I will never buy another gas car, but I will also never buy another Tesla.

I like being able to request service through an app, but I would appreciate being able to call or chat with a human too.

But I’m currently waiting for a (minor, non-critical) service that has been pending for month. The (friendly! competent!) tech showed up once with the wrong part, because Tesla doesn’t have their mapping from VIN to supported parts done well enough to actually send technicians with the right part. Still waiting for a second try. (As far as I can tell, the part I need is quite basic and works with all Model S versions from inception to 2020. That doesn’t mean that Tesla can find the thing. If the part I needed were a roof shingle or a fancy diode or connector or something, I’d have a real problem.)

Main problem is that solar roof was never a serious product. It was vaporware announced by Elon to justify bailing out SolarCity with Tesla money. That’s it. Really. There’s nothing more to the story.

If recall correctly there where some legal proceedings about that, hasn't anything came up from it? I thought there where serious issues in that deal but I might be mistaken.

I would go even further tbh. Solar panels on the roof isn’t something that people want to hide. Nobody wants to admit it but my guess is the majority of people that get solar panels want to show them off, not hide them.

Edit: and that’s not a judgement by me either. If I had solar panels I’d want to show them off as well. They’d be a good conversation piece for neighbors.

I put solar panels on my house in London this past year. I would have been happy to have hidden them in the roof. Lots of my neighbors are also investigating or getting solar due to the cost of electricity rising and the low cost of panels. I think the solar target market is well into the "normies" who don't care as much about showing off tech stuff.

The problem for me was that integrated options just weren't competitive for a retrofit on an old house. Having 4 panels put up and wired cost a few thousand dollars/pounds and took them about 6 hours to install. An integrated roof solution would have been 30k+ with structural roof work over weeks with permits. I'd probably still be working on it.

So it is more like do you want to pay 5x-10x to HIDE them? That's a small luxary market right now IMO.

I think the original selling point was that if you were doing new construction, and had budgeted for a "premium" roof (slate for example) then for a small percentage extra you could have solar integrated into them. And you wouldn't be hiding your "premium" roof.

Again, not something for the mass market, but more for the market that would put up slate or terracotta roofs.

> lots of people who want solar, but my guess is very few are willing to pay even +25% to make it "look seamless", let alone 3x

As someone who's putting solar panels on his roof, the efficiency gap was also a dealbreaker. I don't know how many people are in the overlap of wanting solar panels but finding them visually hideous.

Seamless for us would mean roughly twice as much power output - the gables on our roof are inconveniently sized for standard panels. Combine that with the cost of a new roof and I’d consider it at a modest markup, but they’d have to convince me it has better than Tesla build quality.

It's hard to look at even $25k for a solar roof when I see panels on sunelec.com going for ~ .33/watt, sometimes less.

Well worth reading John’s blog! He’s quite the character!

but how much does a normal tile roof cost? (no solar, no panels)

because the solar roof cost should not be compared to the cost of panels. Its not replacing panels it replacing the entire roof.

The plan in 2016 was for it to cost less than a normal roof + panels[0]. Then in 2019 they said that the new version will cost the same[1].

I guess they haven't managed to meet that price target otherwise they would have no shortage of orders.

[0] https://electrek.co/2016/11/17/tesla-solar-roof-cost-less-th...

[1] https://electrek.co/2019/06/12/tesla-solar-roof-v3-shingle-p...

Only if you were already going to reroof your house.

This product has always been targeted on people who are building new houses or have to reroof a house.

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