Tesla has introduced the third iteration of its solar roof tile for residential homes and plans on starting installations in the coming weeks.
The V3 Solar Roof from Tesla is the latest version of the solar panel roof tiles that were first announced as a concept by Tesla some three years ago. So far, only trial installations of version one and version two have been completed. Elon Musk believes that “version three is finally ready for the big time.”
Having a house’s roof replaced with Tesla solar panel tiles won’t be cheap, although Musk says it is comparable to the average roof replacement cost plus third-party solar panels. The company’s Solar Roof website says the average total price for a 2,000 square-foot home is $42,500 before federal tax incentives.
Also Read: Tesla To Produce Solar Panels At Gigafactory With Panasonic
“The solarglass roof is not going to make financial sense for somebody who has a relatively new roof, because this is itself a roof, that has integrated solar power generation,” Musk explained on an earnings call with Tech Crunch.
Tesla is initially hiring and training specialized installers and plans on farming out some work to third-party contractors. Musk said a lot of time has been spent to ensure installation is quick and actually takes less time than installing a traditional roof with tiles and then solar panels on top of them. The company wants to be installing roughly 1,000 solar roofs per week sometime in the “next several months.”
During the earnings call, Musk said the launch of the company’s solar roof tiles had been delayed significantly partly because of initial troubles with ramping up production of the Tesla Model 3.
