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PRODUCERS OF ECO-FRIENDLY goods continue to try to strike the balance between cost-effectiveness, practicality and aesthetics.
A new product released by electric car manufacturer Tesla claims to tick two of those boxes – and leaves us in the dark over the third.
This weekend, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk unveiled solar roofs for environmentally friendly homes, saying “global warming is a serious crisis and we need to do something about that”.
The roof tiles are made with extremely strong tempered glass, high-efficiency solar cells and colored film – claiming to look much better than the traditional solar panels.
The company also claim that the tiles are more durable than terra cotta, clay, and slate tiles, being able to withstand greater impacts.
But there is still no price announced for the tiles.
Musk, who is also the company’s co-founder, said during a news conference at Universal Studios in Los Angeles that electric cars in the past “didn’t look good… They were like a golf cart,” but claimed that Tesla automobiles are now highly desired through tweaks to their design.
He said that solar panels need to undergo the same transformation.
“The goal is to have solar roofs that look better than a normal roof, generate electricity, last longer, have better insulation, and actually have a total cost that is less than the price of a normal roof plus electricity,” Musk said.
“Why would you buy anything else?”
The tiles are promised to ‘lower your electricity bill’, ‘increase the value of your home’ and ‘reduce your carbon footprint’.
Tesla
Founded in 2003, Tesla has a history of heavy investments which have led to consistent losses.
This week, the company released better-than-expected results for the third quarter of the year, which lifted Tesla shares 5.5% in after-hours trade on Wall Street.
Despite this being only the company’s second profitable quarter as a public company, Musk sent a letter to shareholders upon the announcement, predicting profitability in the fourth quarter too.
“New product launches, increased store efficiency and new store openings drove year-on-year order growth in the third quarter, while self-driving hardware and other product enhancements position Tesla for additional market share gains,” Musk said in the letter penned by him and his chief finance officer Jason Wheeler.
The letter said the company expects more than 25,000 deliveries in the fourth quarter to bring the total for the second half of the year to some 50,000 – “despite the challenges of winter weather and the holiday season”.
Musk announced at the launch yesterday that they expect to start installing the first of the roof tiles “sometime next year”.
With reporting from Gráinne Ní Aodha
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“Affordable Lower cost than a traditional roof when combined with projected utility bill savings”. As per their website. Depends on what is affordable to you. But it’s a step in the right direction I think.
Good, now bring on the competition.
Sounds excellent to me
I knew someone would slate them
Musk is the competition. PV roof tiles are already commercialised. Suntegra is one example. There is also some interesting development in building PV into window glass. Buildings cover 2% of the planet, so using their roofs, walls and windows to harness some energy makes sense. In fact buildings are major contributors to global warming, more so than our maligned vehicles .
Deadly. Elon Musk is a visionary and genius of the higest order. It is also becoming cheaper, thanks to higher efficiency and lower production cost panels, to produce electricity for less than the total cost of burning solid fuel, and its improving all the time.
Combine it with newly emerging tech for harnessing the kinetic energy of falling rain and you’d have a perfect solution for powering an Irish home.https://www.eniday.com/en/sparks_en/harnessing-the-energy-of-rain/
A visionary maybe. But Tesla are even better at losing money. This is a pyramid idea unless it can be made profitable. ..
John, always a naysayer.
All companies lose money when they are developing products , they were designing a sub 35k electric car which takes billions and then they had to tool up. Orders are strong and they’ll be one if the most profitable company in the word soon enough.
Made a profit this quarter, predicting a 4th quarter profit as above and have announced they won’t be needing to raise further capital for model 3 manufacture and assembly infrastructure…
By all accounts it’s very different from the many money pit tech start ups addicted to spending successive rounds of VC funding.
..@Brian magee: not a naysayer, a pragmatist. As a builder of NZEB & Passive performance houses for over 10 years I have a more than passing interest in this stuff. .
@John Moylan:
Amazon only started making money this year.
@For Connolly: he’s not really, he just has tons of cash. With all the wealth I would be talking about human settlement son Mars, solar powered roof tiles, etc. etc. The great thing about him is that he seems to be led by his imagination and creativity, which, for someone in his position can be truly inspirational to others.
And joined up thinking which is the game changer………… The trifecta you could say, make the energy, store the energy, and use the energy…… Makes sense to me, why can’t others see this.
I’m a huge Elon Musk fan, though I’m amazed he has gotten this far without being taken out by Shell et al.
Who’ll lay them sparks or roofer?
If it’s sparks I’m out of a job
@liam hayes: Well Liam,I reckon there will be plenty of work in cleaning them with the amount of moss that seems to appear on roofs.just a thought for you.
Start studying your stuff about solar energy and you could soon become the franchisee for Ireland!
Elon musk reminds me of Steve jobs…
except he’s not a d1ckhead
Arent photovoltaic cells in toof tiles already a thing?
There’s always one wisearse
They are but they are nothing like these ones
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen someone merging like this before in the last couple of years, possibly with a (surprisingly because of the general lack of sun) Irish connection.
Anyway. Move in the right direction. Hopefully will tie into his power wall.
Have a friend in SF who has a tesla X (she married a millionaire) and they have the power wall plugged into solar tubes to charge it. Says it costs her almost nothing to run.
….which means it’s irrelevant : a millionaire not paying to run a car is as useful as a chocolate teapot …..
Why mention the “in SF” part?
San Francisco
Solar tubes? Tubes are for hot water !! Not much use plugged into a power wall
@ Brian Magee: I don’t pay much attention to her & know little about the technology, either she or I have the terminology wrong.
@ Brendan Magill: that’s where she lives. Seemed relevant.
Aha I did a Reverse Bono sorry haha
Omg. My new A2 energy rating house is old news. Should have got tesla shares 2 years ago.
Sounds great.
would love to see how they wire together
Rooves, not roofs. Not on this side of the Atlantic anyway.
Rooves ? I think not
Both are acceptable. Rooves is an old secondary form.
In Spain if you use solar to make electricity you must pay a tax to the energy company so I wouldn’t be holding my breath on lower bills just yet
I’ll sleep better tonight
Strange the article doesn’t mention the merger of tesla and solar city.
have your say