> They establish the demand and build anticipation in the product.
Who's left to do that? The article says that they gutted the solar sales team.
> Or is it more likely that they lost focus on Solar Roof during the Model 3 ramp, and that they are still doing the R&D to increase manufacturing yield and longevity of the tiles, and hope to ramp up production later this year?
Do you have an actual source for that, or is that just a scenario you personally are speculating on?
Tesla declined to comment on the article (but for a tiny quote). Not only is that highly unlike Tesla, but if your first assertion is true, ("first establish the demand and build anticipation"), then this silence does not bode well.
> Who's left to do that? The article says that they gutted the solar sales team.
They now sell them via the stores, the internet, and direct marketing to their car customers. There isn't as much revenue here, but presumably it isn't unprofitable now.
Regarding the plans for ramping this year, I have similar concerns to you. Having said that, there are sources for a claim of ramping this year. Quoting Elon Musk on the Q1 2019 earnings call:
"And then the Solar Roof tile, we are on Version 3 of the design. That necessarily takes a while to scale up because we have to be confident that the Solar Roof is going to last on the order of 30 years and because the warranty is sort of 20, 25 years and so the rate at which you can iterate on Solar Roof is necessarily slowed down by [indiscernible] which you can do accelerate aging on the roof and we want the installation process to be simple and easy, which is actually the Tesla Buffalo factory a few weeks ago and I was pretty impressed with the team and we are looking forward to scaling that up significantly through the balance of this year and next."
"We also have – we are also finding a significant increase in retrofit solar this year, because we have finally refined the product offering to be something that’s extremely compelling and much more cost efficient to deliver and install."
Obviously there are no numbers there, so who knows what a "significant increase" is in this statement.
>Who's left to do that? The article says that they gutted the solar sales team.
It's not clear to me that they need a sales team for a product so highly differentiated. If they can deliver a solar roof product as promised, they're no longer in the heavily commoditized traditional photovoltaics market that requires boots on the ground. A wholesale distribution model where they exit the installation business makes sense in that reality — they don't have any real competitive advantage in sales or technical ability in the existing retail market.
Who's left to do that? The article says that they gutted the solar sales team.
> Or is it more likely that they lost focus on Solar Roof during the Model 3 ramp, and that they are still doing the R&D to increase manufacturing yield and longevity of the tiles, and hope to ramp up production later this year?
Do you have an actual source for that, or is that just a scenario you personally are speculating on?
Tesla declined to comment on the article (but for a tiny quote). Not only is that highly unlike Tesla, but if your first assertion is true, ("first establish the demand and build anticipation"), then this silence does not bode well.