Tesla's Solar Roof: A Guide for Skeptics

Energy Gang

Wood Mackenzie

Tech News, Environment, Sustainability, Innovation, Renewable Energy, Technology, Alternative Energy, Energy, News, Cleantech, Wind Energy, Business, Climate Change, Solar Energy

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is a free version of the Interchange. For more on how to access all our premium content, visit GTM Squared: https://www.greentechmedia.com/squared Back in August, Elon Musk broke into SolarCity's earnings call to make a surprise announcement: Tesla and SolarCity were designing a building-integrated solar product. "It's a solar roof as opposed to a module on a roof," said Musk. Just a few weeks earlier, Tesla went public with its intentions to acquire SolarCity. The solar roof was seen as an example of what the combined companies could create, market and sell. "We don't want to show all of our cards right now, but I think people are going to be really excited about what they see," said Musk. Their cards are now on the table after Musk unveiled the solar roof last Friday. The product was stunning -- but Tesla failed to release any substantive details about cost, performance, financing, or its business model for deploying solar roofs. (Given that very few building-integrated PV companies have actually succeeded, the lack of details was particularly fishy.) In this week's podcast, we dig into all the knowns and unknowns about Musk's mysterious solar roof. Does this represent a radical new business opportunity? Or is it just glitzy PR designed to convince investors of Tesla's plan to buy SolarCity? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone. We're giving you more bonus content this week. That's right, another
0:04.7	free episode of the Interchange, a podcast from GTM squared. Everyone is talking
0:09.4	about Tesla's Solar Roof and since it's at the top of the news cycle and perhaps at the top of your mind, we
0:14.9	wanted to share our analysis. You can get this kind of analysis every week at GTM squared.
0:19.9	In fact, this week we've got a deep dive into the wonky energy decisions the next president will face,
0:24.8	as well as an overview of Japan's booming distributed storage industry.
0:28.6	That and much more is at GTM squared.
0:31.4	Find it at Green Tech Media.com slash squared.
0:35.0	This is the Interchange, a weekly conversation about the changing business of energy and clean tech from GTM squared.
0:50.0	I'm Stephen Lacey with Shale Khan and we're sitting here in our office together
0:55.2	digesting Tesla's solar shingles that Elon Musk unveiled last week.
0:59.4	Hey Shale.
1:00.4	Hey Stephen.
1:01.4	You spent your weekend thinking about Tesla, huh? Yeah, nothing else. No Halloween parties just Tesla. No, no, no. Yeah, just thinking about Tesla. Okay, so you may remember from our episode in August with Eric Westoff, we chatted about what Tesla's solar roof might look like.
1:14.2	Musk unveiled this on a solar city earnings call.
1:17.8	He kind of jumped in there and it was like surprising.
1:20.3	I don't think the Rive Brothers, yeah, expected it.
1:24.0	So now we know what it looks like.
1:26.3	It's a glass tile that comes in four types, textured glass, slate glass, tusken glass,
1:32.3	and smooth glass.
1:33.8	It's a pretty slick product, don't you think?
1:35.8	Yeah, no, I mean, it looks great.
	...

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