Tesla will debut a new, third iteration of its solar roof tile this week — with an official debut tomorrow afternoon. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s earnings call on Wednesday that it’ll make an official announcement detailing the differences in generation three on Thursday afternoon.
Tesla originally unveiled its solar roof tile product back in 2016, and officially opened pre-orders in 2017. During the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Musk said that the product was already in its third iteration, which he said improved performance and put the product on cost parity with cheap, non-solar roofing tiles, once you factor in savings over time on utility cost plus the cost of purchase for the new roof.
It seems like that version was in testing at that point, and is now ready for general consumer sales and purchase. The solar tiles have not seemed to have seen consumer installations in any kind of significant scale to date, with existing customers with reservations in place claiming they haven’t heard much in the way of installation timeline expectations. Perhaps we’ll learn more about availability and roll-out plans along with tomorrow’s “official” launch of the version-three product.
