Tesla has officially ended its Solar Roof project six years after predicting it would be installing 1,000 units per week. The most the company ever installed, at its absolute peak, was 32.
Indeed, it’s only installed 3,000 in total. For context, if the company had achieved Elon Musk’s 1,000 per week goal, it should have installed around 345,000 solar roofs by now.
There was no press release or regulatory filing that accompanied the shutdown. Journalists simply noticed that the webpage, tesla.com/solarroof, now redirects to a separate solar panels webpage.
Solar Roof has also disappeared from the Tesla Energy menu.
One source said Tesla had concluded an internal review that the product was “not financially viable.”
Below is a timeline of the company, from its early days and $2.6 billion acquisition, through an incredible series of government subsidies, litigation, and its final chapter this month.
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Timeline of Tesla Solar Roof (SolarCity)
- June 16, 2014: SolarCity agreed to buy panel maker Silevo for $200 million in stock, plus $150 million in earnouts.
- September 23, 2014: The company scores its first major government subsidy — a lucrative trend that would continue for a decade. New York broke ground at RiverBend, committing $750 million for a plant SolarCity would lease for just $1 a year.
- October 2015: An amended state agreement cut SolarCity’s direct manufacturing commitment in Buffalo from 1,460 jobs to 500.
- July 31, 2016: Tesla signed a stock merger agreement worth roughly $2.6 billion for SolarCity. Musk and two of his cousins were controlling shareholders prior to the deal.
“Musk knew SolarCity was going broke before merger with Tesla,” a shareholder lawsuit alleged. Also at that time, Musk had over $475 million in personal loans backed partially backed by SolarCity stock. - October 28, 2016: Musk unveiled four tiles at Universal Studios. Omitted from his presentation were certain facts that the tiles generated no electricity, were “conceptual in nature,” and built not for solar power generation but “demonstration of the aesthetics.”
- November 17, 2016: Tesla shareholders approved the SolarCity acquistion.
- November 21, 2016: The merger closed, making SolarCity a Tesla subsidiary and Solar Roof an official Tesla product.
- December 27, 2016: Panasonic finalized an agreement to make photovoltaic cells at its Buffalo, New York plant. In an obvious quid pro quo, Tesla committed to “a long-term purchase commitment from Panasonic.”
- May 10, 2017: Tesla opened orders for SolarCity at $21.85 per square foot of total roof area, promising a lifetime warranty.
- May 25, 2017: Two weeks later, an RBC analyst noted Solar Roof orders as sold out through 2018.
- August 2, 2017: Tesla disclosed that Tesla employees received the first Solar Roof installations.
- January 9, 2018: Tesla told Reuters that its Buffalo, NY facility had begun producing Solar Roof tiles as of December 2017.
- June 12, 2018: In a restructuring that cut about 9% of staff, Musk ended Tesla’s Home Depot partnership for SolarCity sales.
- August 8, 2018: A Reuters investigation found Buffalo producing only one of the four tile styles that Musk demonstrated in 2016.
- September 24, 2018: A CNBC investigation found only 12 Solar Roofs connected in California as of May 2018, far below Musk’s estimate of several hundred.
- October 25, 2019: Tesla launched Solar Roof V3, quoting roughly $33,950 for a 2,000 square foot roof. On the same call, Musk targeted 1,000 installations a week by the end of 2019.
- January 29, 2020: Tesla reported 54 megawatts of solar capacity deployed and claimed hundreds of new hires at its Gigafactory New York.
- February 26, 2020: Panasonic announced it would stop making solar cells in Buffalo by May and cease entirely by September.
- March 16, 2020: Tesla claimed it had built four megawatts of solar tiles in one week, which it claimed was enough for 1,000 homes.
- August 21, 2020: A state audit found Buffalo projected to return 54 cents per subsidy dollar, 98% short of its $30 benchmark.
- September 2020: Panasonic completed its withdrawal from Buffalo, leaving Tesla to run the factory alone.
- January 27, 2021: Tesla reported 205 megawatts of solar deployed across 2020.
- March 2021: Tesla began emailing customers that it had raised Solar Roof prices.
- April 11, 2021: Price hikes reached contracts signed more than a year prior, commonly adding 30% and more than 50% to customers’ costs in some cases.
- April 22, 2021: Musk said Solar Roof and Tesla panels would only be sold bundled with a Powerwall battery.
- April 26, 2021: Musk conceded on a quarterly earnings call that Tesla had “made some significant mistakes in assessing the difficulty of certain roofs.”
- April 30, 2021: Two Pennsylvania customers sued, alleging Tesla raised their contracted price by tens of thousands of dollars after signing.
- May 12, 2021: A California class action put one increase at $71,074.42 to $146,462.22 — more than double the price in the original signed contract. Tesla settled that case.
- July 13, 2021: Musk testified on the stand in Delaware court, defending the SolarCity acquisition.
- April 27, 2022: Delaware’s Court of Chancery came down in favor of Musk, ruling the SolarCity acquisition “entirely fair.”
- September 12, 2022: Tesla reiterated its purchase requirement of at least one Powerwall per every new Solar Roof.
- November 10, 2022: Tesla canceled Solar Roof projects across several states, including permitted ones, and exited some markets entirely.
- June 6, 2023: The Delaware Supreme Court, sitting en banc, affirmed an appeal in favor of Musk, ending nearly seven years of litigation over the SolarCity acquisition.
- July 11, 2023: Tesla settled a California price-hike class action lawsuit for $6.08 million covering about 8,636 customers, admitting no wrongdoing.
- January 24, 2024: Tesla reported 41 megawatts of solar for the quarter, its weakest since 2020. It would never publish another quarterly figure.
- March 7, 2024: A judge approved a settlement that closed Tesla’s final price-hike lawsuit.
- April 16, 2024: Tesla filed a state layoff notice covering 285 Buffalo, NY jobs as it thinned its Solar Roof operations.
- September 25, 2024: Tesla recruited more third-party installers as it wound down its own in-house crews.
- April 19, 2025: Tesla removed online Solar Roof quotes, routing buyers to its third-party installer network.
- July 4, 2025: Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill repealed Tesla’s residential solar tax credit at the end of 2025.
- January 29, 2026: Tesla unveiled its own conventional solar panel, the product that now replaces the Solar Roof.
- May 14, 2026: Solar Roof projects in Florida are canceled, with field crews reassigned to repairs rather than installations.
- August 20, 2026: Tesla told installers that Solar Roof tiles were no longer orderable.
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