Tesla Stopped Reporting Solar Numbers 10 Quarters Ago. No…
The economics never worked
The Solar Roof’s problem seems to have been less about demand for the idea than about the economics of the product. Tesla marketed the tiles as costing less than a new roof plus traditional solar panels, but real quotes ran far higher. TechCrunch reported quotes reaching $200,000 for a single installation. And in 2021, Tesla sharply raised prices, in some cases on customers who had already signed contracts. The tiles were unique to the Solar Roof system, too, requiring custom manufacturing equipment whose cost per unit climbed as volumes disappointed.
Those volumes showed up in Tesla’s own quarterly updates, which reported the solar business as one combined line (megawatts of solar deployed, panels and tiles together). By the fourth quarter of 2023, that figure had shrunk to 41 megawatts, down 59% year over year and lower for a fourth straight quarter.
Even more telling: Electrek reported, citing a source close to the program, that Tesla internally concluded the product is not financially viable. Tesla itself hasn’t publicly explained the decision, and the company could say more when it next reports results, ly in October.
The energy business never needed it
For holders, the Solar Roof’s death says very little about the electric vehicle maker’s energy segment, because the segment’s growth was never coming from it.
In the second quarter of 2026, Tesla’s energy generation and storage revenue rose 13% year over year to about $3.1 billion, or about 11% of the company’s total revenue. In its quarterly filing, the company attributed the increase to higher Megapack deployments (the utility-scale batteries), partially offset by lower Megapack prices and a decline in Powerwall deployments.
Whatever the mix, the volumes keep building. Tesla deployed 13.5 gigawatt-hours of energy storage in the second quarter, its second-best quarter ever on that measure.
Solar, meanwhile, has disappeared from Tesla’s reporting altogether. The 41 megawatts deployed in the fourth quarter of 2023 turned out to be the last solar deployment figure the company has disclosed to date. The line item vanished from Tesla’s first-quarter 2024 update, and 10 straight quarterly updates have now gone by without one.
Storage gets a deployment figure every quarter. Solar gets none.
That doesn’t mean Tesla is done with solar. The company began manufacturing a new retrofit solar panel in 2025, according to its quarterly filing. And in July it applied for Texas tax incentives on a proposed $10.1 billion solar cell factory, with commercial operations targeted for 2029. The energy pitch still centers on storage, though, with Megapack, the newer Megablock, and a new Megafactory under construction near Houston.
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NASDAQ: TSLA
Tesla
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Moneyball Superscore
65/100
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$1.4TMarket cap calculated using publicly traded s outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded s. Implied market cap may vary.
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The shutdown looks discipline
The decision looks discipline to me, and arguably overdue discipline. Tesla kept the Solar Roof alive for nearly a decade after unveiling it, through pricing resets and production experiments, while the product that actually scaled (the Megapack) drove the segment’s most recent growth and helped push its revenue to about $3.1 billion a quarter.
Killing a product this publicly associated with the company’s image, and with Musk’s own promises for it, is not a small step. But it could free up resources for the parts of the energy business that have proven they can grow.
There is a risk worth acknowledging, though. The energy segment’s growth rate has cooled to 13%, Powerwall deployments are falling, and Megapack prices are coming down. Storage is a competitive business, and it now carries the whole segment — for a company whose stock still costs more than 150 times next year’s expected earnings.
The Solar Roof was supposed to make every rooftop a Tesla product. More than six years after Musk said Tesla should be installing 1,000 a week, the company is moving on. Judged by where the energy segment’s money comes from, it arguably should have moved on sooner.
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About the Author
Daniel Sparks is a contributing Motley Fool stock market analyst covering technology, industrials, financials, and consumer goods. Daniel is the owner and chief investment officer of Sparks Capital Management. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from Colorado State University. The Globe and Mail profiled him and his investing philosophy in an article titled, “This stock picker is outperforming nearly everybody else. Here’s how he is doing it.”
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