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Can I add that outside of the political commentary because thats mainly the only reason this is on hackernews.

There are mounting challenges in climate tech - specifically in residential solar: 1. Residential solar has been under punishing economic headwinds. Tariffs (before this) against imported PV. The market has not been performing. 2. Many of the Public Utilities are making it very difficult for solar to work out financially for home owners - see CPUC in California changing the terms of NEM to the advantage of the Utilities as an example. 3. Energy storage in residential markets has ALWAYS been an insurance product/backup power and not a financially beneficial product. It is tough competition against generators etc 4. Utilities are wisening up and increasing their fees and reducing the benefits of on site power generation. 5. Residential solar has likely already found all the best home owners (ie lowest CAC) so are now pursuing harder to reach.

Marques Brownlee had a system put in and ran it for a year. It was ok but cost $120k which seems a bit steep. Summary section of vid: https://youtu.be/UJeSWbR6W04?t=1119

Tesla was pushing solar pretty hard for a time a long time ago. My memories actually line up with the charts here.

Then they kind of just... stopped talking about it at all? In retrospect it was kind of a quiet sea change for the company as a whole.

Just bought a new house in the burbs. Want to get solar. I assumed Tesla was a good company to get them through.

Does anyone have (a non-political) opinion on Tesla Solar? And/or how I should think about getting panels (and battery) installed at my house?

Did they ever actually install many of those solar tiles?

Such a brilliant idea all the same.

A shame that the economics never seemed to work.

Apart from the questionable economics of single family home roof solar. Having an integrated PV roof just makes things worse. It couples function of the roof to the PV function. With normal panels on top of a normal roof, one actually protects the roof and prolongs its life as it protect the roof below from UV, weather and heat.

IMVHO as an European, with p.v. and storage:

- I do want DC-direct car charging, not double conversion, something who exists in EU CCS-combo as a standard but not a single vendor implement it...

- I do want a LOCAL FIRST (and only eventually) system, some vendors offer that, I do not know if Tesla offer that but I doubt a bit

- I do want modular batteries because anyone have different storage needs

- a classic string inverter OR microinverter who do not waste p.v. power because modules output more than they can convert for AC usage, but DC direct for charging all batteries AND possibly for heat pumps compressors as well

Why I write this here? Well because Telsa have a single peculiarity "being ahead of the others" and actually for p.v. they are not ahead of anyone. My small system is built on a Victron master inverter (relatively FLOSS with a custom Debian named VenusOS, well integrated in Home Assistant), on BYD moderately modular batteries and Fronius p.v. inverters, good for the p.v. parts but very bad in software terms. It's still more open than Tesla and perform better than PowerWall+Solar roof in theory.

Tesla cars still have the best software even if way too much service-oriented, but beside that they have shown very little innovation and China taking on quickly, also some choices like do not have V2L I can use to power my main inverter and so a bit usable to power the home with extra storage of the car battery penalize Tesla as well.

Long story short in the past they was good. But tech evolve and they seems not much interested in positive evolution. I'm not interested in Cybertruck or in small usual cabin controls changes like directions on the steering wheel as buttons, I do care about substantial evolution.

If Tesla offer something like:

- a hybrid p.v. inverter with 400V DC + data channel and car charging home station

- modular storage from 5 to 50 to 100 kWh

- home heat pumps DC direct for sanitary water, home heating/cooling

I buy it, no question. If not they haven't nothing I can buy from different vendors, cheaper and even less closed.

It's hard to take a company seriously whose founder goes all in for Trump. It's humiliating.

I heard a former Solar City marketing person talk about it. He said when Tesla bought them back, Musk cancelled all of the marketing budget. Musks justification was that marketing was a waste of money and he could get more sales via a single free tweet.

He then proceeded to not tweet about that part of his business.

The article notes they think Tesla should be about to find customers for solar easily, so asked, what's going on? And that a high point for them was installing 100 megawatts -- which struck me as small.

Some quick googling and clicking result #1 (risky, I know) showed this [1] claiming that 2024 was the second record-breaking solar installation year in a row. And that 50 gigawatts had been installed in the US.

That makes me think:

* Isn't Tesla Solar's max 100Mw number rather, well, tiny? A small drop? Why, for a company like Tesla?

* The article's exactly right. They _should_ be able to find more customers.

Does anyone have more insight? Does this part of the company have a good reputation?

[1] https://seia.org/research-resources/us-solar-market-insight/

Tesla panels and total price after installation is too high to be competitive- only the Powerwall enthusiasts buy panels+powerwalls from tesla. Other panels are so cheap these days and EG4 makes excellent power storage options.

Tesla is a meme stock. Caveat emptor. For a considerable period, the price has never made sense considering the fundamentals. It's currently valued at ~$450k per car delivered in 2024 with a P/E ratio of 108 and that's after a 50% decline from its peak.

Just compare it to any other car company, be it the Big Three, European car makers or BYD.f

The whole purchase of SolarCity was one of Elon's companies (Tesla) buying another company of Elon's that was failing (SolarCity) because it owed a lot of money to a third company of Elon's (SpaceX).

Tesla's most recent quarterly shipments are down 13# Y/Y with likely worse to come. The brand is being publicly torched by the actions of its CEO. A protracted trade war with China could end very badly for Tesla. A trade war with Europe may see the EU replace its demand for EVs with the likes of BYD.

Solar is (now) a commodity business. The panels get ever-cheaper. The only real cost is installation. And a labor-intensive cost like that doesn't scale.

I predict that Tesla will be forced to try and save itself by ousting its CEO in the coming years.