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Tesla's New York Gigafactory Kicks Off Solar Roof Production (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the long-awaited dept.

In an email Tuesday, Tesla said that its manufacturing of the long-awaited electricity-producing shingles began last month at a factory in Buffalo built with backing from New York State. It comes more than a year after Tesla unveiled the shingles to a mix of fanfare and skepticism. Bloomberg reports: The appeal: a sleek, clean solar product, especially for homeowners seeking to replace aging roofs. The tiles -- from most angles -- look like ordinary shingles. They allow light to pass from above and onto a standard flat solar cell. Tesla, the biggest U.S. installer of rooftop-solar systems, piloted the product on the homes of several employees. The company expects to begin installing roofs for customers within the next few months.

Tesla started production of solar cells and panels about four months ago at its Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo. New York committed $750 million to help build the 1.2 million-square-foot factory, which currently employs about 500 people. The plant will eventually create nearly 3,000 jobs in Western New York and nearly 5,000 statewide, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in 2015.

5 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. About time. by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Musk has so many things going on. Amazing that he can track these.
    Still, if he gets these off the ground and they have figured out the snow loads on them, we will be ordering these the next time that our roof is destroyed by hail (it will be the 3rd time).
    These roofs are supposed to be more hail proof than concrete or slate tile, which hold up against all the hail on the front range (golf ball to baseball size).

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re:About time. by bigwheel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Tesla's hail demo is not that impressive for a modern solar panel, IMO. Check this video of the SolarWorld panels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Now, That is impressive!

    2. Re: About time. by steveha · · Score: 4, Interesting

      twice as heavy as a regular roof

      This article claims that the Tesla tiles are one-third the weight of typical roofing tiles.

      https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/heres-how-much-a-tesla-solar-roof-will-cost-you

      According to Tesla, the roof is "three times as strong as standard roofing tiles" and one-third the weight of a normal tile.
      [...]
      Musk said the strong tempered glass makes it easier to ship than conventional tiles. And because the product is one-third the weight, the cost of shipment is also much lower. "We save on logistics and breakage," he said.

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      lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  2. Re:smart money by youngone · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Unfortunately it's not just Republicans and Democrats doing this.

    Hollywood found this trick 25 years ago, and extorted the Gold Coast in Australia, Toronto in Canada, and New Zealand (that I know of) with the "All those nice jobs will have to go overseas unless we get some subsidies" trick.

    The Lord of the Rings movies cost my neighbours and I $50 million for instance.

    They're all arseholes.

  3. Re:smart money by Arkh89 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sure but let's look at some values here : 750M for 8000 jobs (3K+5K) over say 10 years (at 0%) that's a requirement of 9.3K/person/year in state taxes to recover. Just from income, that would require each person to be paid over 150K/year (with about 100K income after taxes).
    If we include sales taxes at about 9% and we assume that each person spends half of his/her after-tax income, we get to down to a requirement of 101K/year salary per person.
    There are certainly other indirect sources (you mentioned some) to consider to get to the complete picture here, but still... it seems far-fetched...