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Tesla and SolarCity's merger doesn't appear to have a bright future

2019-05-22T09:34:00-04:00

Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity is looking worse and worse. And its $1 billion solar gigafactory in Buffalo, New York, which the state built, subsidized, and equipped for SolarCity, seems to be primarily operating as a Panasonic plant. [...] In the more than two years since Tesla acquired SolarCity, its overall solar installations have plummeted by more than 76%.

In 2016 Tesla purchased SolarCity for $2.6 billion. Much criticism and backlash had been pivoted towards Elon Musk's decision to acquire the company due to his own personal ties with the company and its co-founders. Although ambitious, much like most of Musk's ideas for an ideal world, the Solar Roof line hasn't made much progress with getting production up and running. With production competitors from the East, the goal to provide rooftop shingles embedded with solar cells appears to be a flop.

Musk holding solar rooftop shingle. Image © Tesla

"The overwhelming majority of the solar cells produced at the facility are now being sold overseas rather than being used in Tesla’s “Solar Roof” photovoltaic product, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday, [...] A Tesla spokesperson told Reuters it’s “actively installing” the Solar Roof product in eight states but declined to discuss its purchases from Panasonic or provide overall installation numbers."

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Tesla's 'Tiny House' goes on roadshow to promote its solar tech

2017-08-14T14:19:00-04:00

Tesla revealed today that it created what it calls the ‘Tesla Tiny House’ to feature its energy products, like solar panels and Powerwall. The company is bringing the house on tour using a Model X “to educate the public on how to generate, store and use renewable energy for their home.” The tiny house contains a Tesla mobile design studio and configurator to help home owners configure a solar plus energy storage system for their home.

Needless to add that the Tesla Tiny House itself gains all its electricity via a solar installation on the tiny roof.

The exhibition tour is limited to four major Australian cities for now, but the economic gain could be far from tiny — as the world's leader in capita penetration of rooftop solar installations (15% of households / 1.5 million households), Australia is a highly lucrative market for Tesla even though it hasn't started selling solar panels there.

Forget solar panels: Elon Musk is thinking "solar roof"

2016-08-11T12:41:00-04:00

Why place individual solar panels on top of a pre-existing roof when you could just build an entire roof with solar technology integrated into it? Elon Musk, CEO of the financially underperforming Solar City and Tesla, sees it as an obvious solution. According to CNNMoney, he said that "If your roof is nearing end-of-life, well, you've got to get a new roof anyway. And so, why not have a solar roof that's better in many others ways as well?"

Although details on the solar roof are still elusive, Musk did note in a blog post that he'd like to build the roofs by integrating SolarCity's technology and Tesla's home battery storage systems.

For more on Musk:

Elon Musk thinks Tesla could be worth $1 trillion – if it buys SolarCity

2016-06-22T19:31:00-04:00

SolarCity's solar panels with Tesla's electric vehicles and stationary storage batteries was "what the world needs, the ultimate solution" to a sustainable-energy future. "As a combined automotive and power storage and power generation company, the potential is there for Tesla to be a trillion-dollar market cap company," [Musk] added. [...] Musk said costs for both companies would go down significantly after the merger, but he did not give specifics.

Elon Musk already sits on the board and owns 22% of the Buffalo-based SolarCity, "the leading installer of residential solar panels" in the US. Musk is convinced that the merger is a no-brainer, but according to Reuters, analysts aren't so smitten with the prospect.

"While we don't doubt that some customers who are interested in electric vehicles and storage products are also interested in going solar, we don't necessarily buy that there is a meaningful cross-sell opportunity – especially currently," RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak told Reuters.

Another analyst, Brian Johnson of Barclays, doesn't have a rosy view either: "While no doubt the Tesla bulls will hail the combination as visionary, we believe the assumption of another $2.6 billion of debt to fold in a solar company with limited synergies and uncertain growth/cash prospects only reinforces our negative view of Tesla."

A press release issued by the Tesla Team yesterday noted how partnering with SolarCity would produce "...

How this new gigafactory may popularize residential solar power technology

2016-03-04T21:24:00-05:00

When production begins, SolarCity, already the leading installer of residential solar panels in the [U.S.] will become a vertically integrated manufacturer and provider...At a time when conventional silicon-based solar panels from China have never been cheaper, investing in a new type of solar technology is a risky undertaking. However, the potential benefits are huge. The new factory...could transform both SolarCity’s business...and the economics of residential solar power.

The MIT Technology Review profiles the upcoming Buffalo-based SolarCity factory and their ambitious plans that could potentially make solar power technology more widely available to consumers.

More news about alternative energy:

Cloud-harvesting skyscraper: renderings of proposed new sustainable Tokyo development

Michigan State University researchers develop completely transparent solar panels

Could 'quantum dots' be the key to turning windows into photovoltaics?

Turning Japan's golfing greens into solar farms

Why SolarCity and Tesla are going to replace your utility

2013-11-27T15:00:00-05:00

SolarCity, the Silicon Valley solar installer, has quietly begun to offer some homeowners a lithium-ion battery pack made by electric carmaker Tesla to store electricity generated by their rooftop photovoltaic arrays. Stem, another Silicon Valley company, will sell or lease a $100,000, 54-kilowatt-hour battery pack to businesses so they can arbitrage the grid by storing electricity when rates are cheap and then using that energy when they’re high.