No stranger to creating a new market for emerging technology, Elon Musk announced yesterday that Tesla is getting into the roofing business with a line of solar panel tiles. The tiles, which come in a variety of traditional looks like ‘Slate Glass Tile’ and ‘Tuscan Glass Tile’ to more futuristic choices like ‘Textured Glass Tile’ and ‘Smooth Glass Tile’, should excite anyone looking forward to a future where the majority of our power can be generated off-grid.
The products will be a collaboration between Tesla and Musk’s SolarCity company, which Tesla is currently in the process of buying. Combining the two businesses will bring together under one company Musk’s three point plan to solve the world’s energy issues via generation (solar panels), storage (batteries) and transportation (electric cars).
To go along with the solar roofing announcement, Musk also talked up Tesla’s Powerwall 2, the latest iteration of household battery storage systems. It’s a sleek and sexy box that can store 14kWh of energy and provide 5kW of continuous draw — more than enough to meet the needs of most residential customers. Currently the price for a Powerwall 2 sits at $5500, but is expected to continue to drop as production at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada continues to ramp up.
There’s no word yet on how much Tesla’s solar roof tiles will cost, but Musk made the claim that solar roofing will cost less than traditional roofing when taking into considering the savings gained from producing your own electricity. They’ll also last two to three times longer than a traditional roof, with Musk adding they could “last longer than the house” in some cases. Tesla expects installations to begin by next summer.
(via Tech Crunch)