Yes, the Tesla Solar Roof tiles, and they did get some tiny number (thousands or something like that?) installed. I actually had ordered one and was in line to get it installed last year. But the company cancelled it, and then Tesla started cancelling all of them apparently. The reason the installer gave was that the v1/v2 were too labor intensive to be worth it, and they were waiting for the v3, but from reports I read another factor is that Tesla has been completely putting most of their solar stuff on the backburner due to internal dysfunction and redirecting all resources to car production. They've blown off a lot of the promises they made to New York at least for production and from the sound of it it's all a big mess. Which is too bad because from what I saw in person the product looks very good, and installations in Florida survived some big hurricane winds last year. So the durability seems to be as advertised vs wind/hail. And I do care about that on my roof of my house. But it appears to not have been at all a real internal priority.
As it happens I found this exact Italian company a few weeks ago trying to research if anyone else was trying to do the tile approach and was excited that there's at least something, even if they're a long time away if ever from any sort of global scale. But it's an approach I'd really like to see as part of the mix. Just driving around and looking, it's obvious people care about how their homes look. Since technologically it's feasible to have aesthetic solar power, it'd be nice to have a bunch of good options there just as there are for traditional roofs.
As far as Tesla, I wonder if they may come to regret burning some bridges and reducing their early lead/mindshare/diversification. The recent crashing prices for car EVs as other players pile into the space shows some of the risk, I bet they wished they'd put more effort into getting the Cybertruck out right now. They may ultimately feel the same about solar and home/business energy. I've got PowerWalls and are mostly happy with them, but I'm very interested in some of the vanadium redox flow batteries getting developed (like by StorEn) as well. Tesla has had an early lead but I think they could easily still squander that.
Ah, so close... the roofs in my area are all reddish-brown and a different color will clash with the local conservation area constraints. But maybe by the time I have to replace my roof (which is soon) they might have the right color.
Hum, thinking of it, there are solar panel exceptions to the constraints, as long as they are flat on the roof...
This is a valid question, idk why you're being downvoted.
You're thinking of SolarCity which was bought by Tesla. There were promises of these kinds of solar cells that I was excited about. Not sure what ever happened to them.
I don't know about initially, but yes, Tesla has a solar tile project. It is mostly being installed by third parties now and is very expensive compared to an asphalt roof with panels.
They got it as part of rescuing SolarCity, which made little sense as a business move from Tesla, but was owned by Musk's cousins so he decided to gift them 2B$, let it go a bit, then abandoned the project.
