Tesla, Facing Setbacks And Skeptics, Tries To Get Back On Course
The most recent data suggests sales remain under pressure in the United States. According to the Dominion Cross-Sell Report, a compilation drawn from state motor vehicle records, registrations of new Tesla cars have improved from earlier in the year but remain below levels of the fourth quarter. In April, 11,707 new Teslas were registered in a 23-state region covered by the report. The states include California, Texas, Florida and Washington, all major markets for Tesla. In January, registrations in the same states totaled 23,310 cars. Registration totals tend to reflect deliveries of the previous month because the data is often compiled a few weeks after cars are actually sold. In a follow-up on May 29, Mr. Musk told employees that the company must move faster to hit its sales goal. 鈥淲e have a lot of vehicle deliveries to catch up to in order to have a successful quarter,鈥?he said. The Model 3 was once expected to become a solid moneymaker, but that, too, is uncertain. The base model has the same battery used by a higher-priced version of the car, but software lowers its range between charges. The result is a car that sells for less but costs about the same to produce.
The only roofing product on the market that comes close to this bold proclamation is a metal roof with an expected 50 year life. This is an important comparison to understand because just looking at the Tesla Solar Roof as simply the covering for the home already sets it apart from most common roofing products. It is a high-end roof, even without the solar aspect. This is not a justification for a higher price, but it is simply the reality of buying a roof that lasts. The Tesla Solar Roof is not a typical roof, and that is highlighted in the fact that it comes with two different guarantees. The first is for the solar production from the roof. The solar production from the Solar Roof is guaranteed for 25 years. This protects the buyer from subpar solar cells, cells failing, or other factors that impact the electrical generation from the system.
Such a guarantee is standard across the solar industry. The second warranty is for the physical roof structure. Because the Tesla Solar Roof is a building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system, in addition to generating power, it also must serve as the physical roof for the house. As a roof, the Tesla Solar Roof is warrantied for infinity or the life of the home, whichever comes first. To ensure accuracy, I went out and got bids for the job from 5 real local contractors in Southern California. This was not a hypothetical exercise, as we are in need of a new roof and were actively pursuing both options to determine which was a better fit for our family. Bids were made based on actual permitted architectural drawings of the roof, with all associated wrinkles and warts. After receiving all of the bids, I took the average price from all 5 contractors and used that as the baseline cost for a comparable roof installation.
37,865.80 for a new metal roof. Musk and his team of energy engineers at Tesla were not simply trying to build a better roof. They were ultimately trying to build a solar product that would help the masses to adopt solar because it was easier, cheaper, higher quality, and better looking. That is a tall order to fill, by any measure. On the cost side of the equation, it is a simple matter of taking the cost of electricity from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and extrapolating that price out over 25 years. I used the most recent cost of residential electricity in California of 19.3 cents/kWh (March 2019) and extrapolated that out using a conservative 2% annual increase. For parity, I priced the system out using the production of the solar system, following the maximum degradation noted by Tesla. 73,436.14 worth of electricity. We do not have a gas line running to our home, so everything in the home runs on electricity. We also have two electric vehicles that pull the vast majority of their electricity from our home.
To offset as much of this consumption as possible, we are installing the largest Tesla Solar Roof tile system that our roof can handle. System sizing on a Tesla Solar Roof is done differently than traditional solar systems, where the number of solar panels used depends on the need and roof capability. Because a Tesla Solar Roof has to serve as a physical cover for the house as its primary function, tiles must cover the entire surface. To size the system, Tesla has developed tiles that have solar cells and tiles that do not 鈥?and they all look essentially the same. For smaller systems, Tesla simply uses fewer tiles containing the actual solar cells. The Tesla Solar Roof for our home has solar cells in every location possible. There are some areas around the edges of the roof and near the hips and joints without cells, but every other surface is setup to produce power.