Tesla has discontinued its Solar Roof tiles and informed certified third-party installers that the integrated roofing product will no longer be available to order, according to Electrek. Tesla will instead continue supplying conventional rooftop solar panels, completing a significant retreat from a product first introduced nearly a decade ago.
Two sources close to the Solar Roof program told Electrek that Tesla notified installers of the change, with one source saying the company had internally concluded that the product was not financially viable.
Changes to Tesla’s website provide another indication of the shift. The former Solar Roof webpage now redirects users to Tesla’s Solar Panels page, while Solar Roof has been removed from the company’s Energy navigation menu. Tesla’s listed energy products now include Solar Panels, Powerwall and Megapack.
The decision ends an ambitious effort to integrate solar generation directly into roofing materials rather than mounting conventional photovoltaic panels over an existing roof.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled Solar Roof in October 2016, shortly before Tesla shareholders approved the approximately $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity.
The original value proposition centered on making the integrated solar roof competitive with the combined cost of installing a traditional new roof and separate solar panels.
Early pricing was promoted at approximately $22 per square foot. But actual installation costs ultimately proved substantially higher, and Tesla sharply increased pricing for some customers in 2021.
One customer’s contracted project reportedly rose from about $72,000 to approximately $146,000 before installation. Tesla later reached a $6 million settlement in 2023 related to a class-action lawsuit over Solar Roof price increases.
Scale also remained far below Tesla’s early ambitions.
Musk repeatedly targeted producing and installing 1,000 Solar Roof systems per week.
Wood Mackenzie data cited by Electrek estimated that peak installations reached only around 21 to 32 systems per week, more than 95% below the 1,000-per-week objective. The research firm estimated that Tesla installed only about 3,000 Solar Roof systems in the U.S. over roughly seven years.
Tesla had already reduced the product’s visibility before formally ending availability. The company stopped separately reporting Solar Roof deployment figures in early 2024, and the product became increasingly absent from its marketing.
The underlying challenges included manufacturing complexity, labor-intensive installation and limitations created by roof orientation and shading, factors that made the economics difficult compared with conventional solar panels.
Tesla is now concentrating its residential solar business around traditional rooftop panels paired with Powerwall energy storage.
The distinction is significant because Tesla is not exiting residential solar. Instead, it is abandoning the more complex integrated roof-tile approach while continuing to pursue conventional solar generation and battery storage.
