Back in August, the tech world went wild upon hearing Elon Musk’s announcement that Tesla was entering the solar roof market, and then everyone wondered just how effective the product could be compared to standard photovoltaic panels and what exactly it would look like. As of last weekend, we know the answer to the latter: The tile will look astonishingly like the average roof shingle.
Investors as well as the public were stunned to see the prototypes unveiled on homes of the old Hollywood set for television’s “Desperate Housewives” or, rather, to not see them as they were expecting obvious PV-incorporating tiles. Said Musk in his presentation Friday night, “You’ll want to call your neighbors over and say, ‘Check out the sweet roof.’ It’s not a phrase you hear often.”
In truth, the tiles do look great and nothing like what we’ve seen before in the solar market. And, to ensure there’s a product for every architectural style, the roof tiles are going to be offered in four different designs: Tuscan, Smooth, Textured and Slate. Tesla managed to achieve this by producing the tiles out of textured glass with a color film and microscopic louvers that allow light to pass through to Panasonic-made solar cells. The tempered glass, supposedly, will be as tough as steel.
Assuming that company shareholders approve Tesla’s proposed acquisition of SolarCity, the tiles could go into production in 2017. If all goes as Musk plans, the tiles will work in concert with Tesla’s Powerwall 2 for those wanting a real off-the-grid power supply. The upgraded wall-mounted, lithium-ion home battery will store electricity generated by the solar roofing and supposedly will offer twice the capacity of the original Powerwall at 14 kilowatt hours.
