Tesla tries revitalizing clean energy business with new solar roofs

A new version of Solar Roof tiles has been released by Tesla as part of its effort for revitalising Tesla’s business of clean energy. The Solar City was bought by Tesla three years back and ever since CEO Elon Musk has been trying to justify the deal worth $2.6 billion.

A webcast was held by the company for discussing about version 3 of Solar Roof this Friday afternoon. The CEO and the other executives have said that new roof includes tiles of solar panels which can blend alongside with the regular roof tiles and will be made at their Buffalo factory. A local installer can be used for installing the new roof on the homes of customers.

Drew Baglino, the vice president of technology of Tesla has said that Solar Roof version 3 use different materials and lesser parts than its prior version and hence their installation was easy. The company also has plans to develop other styles in roof tiles like French slate and earth stone. Tesla solar was delayed in general for the last two years because they had to focus the entire team on Model 3. Now after Model 3 has become a smooth operation, the resources could be redirected towards solar as well as stationary storage.

Tesla has been sued over Solar City deal by the stockholders and a case has been filed in the court of Delaware Chancery. The accusation was that Solar City was improperly valued and the investors were misled about the financial health of solar installers. Walmart has also sued Tesla after solar panels in seven of their retailer shops caught fire. Tesla has been asked to remove the solar panels and to pay the damages incurred in the fires.

Daniel Telvock of WIVB has said that an audit will be conducted by the comptrollers of New York to watch the Buffalo factory of the company. A funding of $750 million was used in building this factory and 1,460 jobs were required to be generated by Tesla by the April of 2020 and missing which Tesla will have to pay a penalty of $41.2 million.