After Tesla Inc. acquired Solar City in 2016 for $2.6 billion, Elon Musk had high hopes for its solar-shingle technology: Produce and install 1,000 of them weekly within a few years.
Yet Tesla
TSLA,
has installed only 3,000 Solar Roof systems in the U.S. total, according to new research from Wood Mackenzie.
“The Tesla Solar Roof, an innovative roofing system made of glass tiles with embedded photovoltaic cells, attracted considerable attention after its initial launch several years ago. But granular installation data has always been elusive, making it challenging to analyze the product’s growth – until now,” Max Issokson, research analyst and lead author of Wood Mackenzie’s “Five Years In: Tesla Solar Roof deployments miss expectations” report.
Average weekly Solar Roof installations were a paltry 21 in the U.S. in 2022, down from 32 in the first quarter of last year, according to the study.
Tesla’s share of the market for new rooftops was less than 0.03% of the approximately 5 million built in the U.S. in 2022, according to Wood Mackenzie.
Tesla was not immediately available for comment.
