Tesla Chinese Solar Roof recently completed building its team in the Tesla China headquarters in Shanghai. Tesla China has invited several photovoltaic engineering companies to participate as construction, operation and maintenance suppliers of Tesla Solar Roof in the Chinese market.
Tesla founder, Elon Musk, announced on Twitter last February 10, that he would be bringing solar roof projects to China. The project has made substantial developments in a month’s time.
Under Musk’s plan, the photovoltaic industry will play an important role in achieving clean energy goals. It was in October 2008 when Musk and his cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive, co-founded SolarCity. A home photovoltaic installation company, it grew into the largest domestic solar photovoltaic system service provider in the USA.
SolarCity went public on the Nasdaq in December 2012. It acquired Silevo in 2014, expanding its services to include battery module manufacturing. In June 2016, Tesla purchase SolarCity for US$2.6 billion. However, profits plummeted in subsequent years. In the same year, the SolarCity’s electric vehicle charging channel was activated for use on the 101 Freeway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The channel fully-charged the Tesla Roadster in just 3 ½ hours.
In October of last year, Tesla launched its third-generation photovoltaic roof product, the Solar Roof V3. Using Chinese photovoltaic cells lowered the product’s price by 40%. In December 2019, Musk said that he will focus more on the energy business in the future. He also noted that the photovoltaic and energy storage business will grow faster than the electric vehicle business. A-share related concept stocks moved after Musk announced that Solar Roof would enter the Chinese market. The CSI Photovoltaic Industry Index rose 17.68% between February 12 to 25.
The projected fast growth of solar roofs remains to be seen as only 10 provinces which include Hebei, Shanxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui, have cumulative installed capacity of photovoltaic power generation above 10GW. This is according to the 2019 Grid-connected Operation of Photovoltaic Power Generation” issued by the National Energy Administration.
At present, there is no price nor reservation information for the Solar Roof product posted on the Tesla China website.
