Perhaps bigger than Powerwall 2, the announcement and detail of Tesla’s Solar Roof is massive. While we’d heard it was coming, today we received the detail. The Tesla Solar Roof will come in a variety of styles, while achieving some pretty stunning project objectives. The Solar Roof is designed to look better, last longer, provide better insulation and cost less than a conventional roof.
These roof tiles are incredibly different to anything we’ve ever seen before. My favourite is certainly the Smooth Glass Tile modern look which is flat and actually shows as opaque from the street, but the angle to the sun is transparent, allowing the solar collection required to power your home or charge that Powerwall in the garage.
Obviously not everyone can put a new roof on their house, but Musk says there’s around 4-5 million new roofs installed every year in the US and around 20x that around the globe. If they were to all start building using a solar roof, it could power the home and avoid the need add solar panels on top. This is clearly a much more elegant solution than post-installation of solar, perhaps not the greatest news for the 1.5 Million Australian homes who already have solar installed.
He went on to say that they (Tesla who are now also SolarCity) see there’s two distinct markets. New home owners would add the Solar Roof, while existing home owners would add solar panels to their roof.
If you missed the event, you can watch the event below.
