Elon Musk’s Tesla is giving up on its Solar Roof — the latest sign that the EV company is shifting gears as its mercurial CEO continues to lean into fossil fuels to sustain his AI ambitions.
Two sources with inside knowledge of the program confirmed to Electrek that the company is discontinuing its solar roof tiles, a key offering allowing homeowners to turn their roofs into renewable energy generators without relying on more unsightly solar panels. According to one of the sources, Tesla found that the product is simply not financially viable.
However, Tesla will continue supplying solar panels, meaning that it hasn’t entirely given up on solar.
In true Musk fashion, Tesla sold its Solar Roof to investors as a cheap way to generate off-grid power at just $22 per square foot back in 2016. But customers who were willing to take the company up on the offer found that the prices for installing the solar tiles immediately ballooned far beyond what Tesla originally quoted, a major disparity that triggered a class-action lawsuit, which the company later settled.
The product quickly turned into a major thorn in Tesla’s side. While Musk promised the company would be installing 1,000 Solar Roofs a week, reality lagged far behind at only several dozen a week at its peak, according to Electrek.
Over seven years, Tesla installed only roughly 3,000 Solar Roofs, a product that turned out to be far more investor pitch and hype than a viable alternative to more conventional solar panels.
At the same time, the EV maker is far from giving up on solar. As TechCrunch reported last week, Tesla is looking to build a $10 billion solar factory in Texas. It’s hoped that the project, dubbed Project Crystal Sun, will break ground this year and be completed it by 2028.
Nonetheless, Musk’s commitment to green energy doesn’t appear to be part of a greater push for sustainability. The richest man in the world’s AI startup, which was folded into his rocket company SpaceX earlier this year, is using dozens of gas turbines burning copious amounts of fossil fuels. Musk has gone as far as to buy up an entire gas turbine manufacturer, as the Wall Street Journal reported last week.
It’s quite the about face for a man who was once happy to project an eco-conscious image. He called burning fossil fuels the “dumbest experiment in history” in 2015, a decade before he dropped the word “sustainable” from Tesla’s mission.
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