I've been watching the solar
I've been watching the solar-shingle space for a couple decades because I never want to buy another shingled roof. It has always seemed like such a waste to buy a roof then punch holes in it to mount solar panels (no offense to anyone in the business of doing that, it's just a feeling I've had that there just has to be a better way). The Tesla Solar Roof truly looks like the first commercial product that can pioneer and build this market, much like their EVs. There have been plenty of others over the years, but unless you had a ton of cash they were well out of reach and eventually the products died because the customer base dried up. Other than the latest (huge) price increases, the biggest issue I have with their products (Roof and Panels) is that the company as a whole provides absolutely NO information to the consumer about availability or timelines until you commit to purchasing their product (not to mention 2 of the 3 different versions of Solar Roof shingles originally announced, one pictured in this article, are nowhere to be seen). Makes me think they are doing something borderline illegal and want to hide as much from consumers and authorities as possible so they aren't scrutinized or penalized. I almost pushed the "buy button" a few days ago when the news came out that they were opening up installations to the entire US, but once again their online support was so shifty when I started asking questions that I got turned off, again. Personally, I think the Generac PWRcell (getpwrcell.com) looks like a better storage solution than the Powerwall, but they assume you you already have solar, so it's not the fully integrated system and one-stop-shop that the Tesla solutions appear to excel at. We really need federal and state incentives to boost adoption and get our grids working as distributed power systems so we can start shutting down huge power plants (as well as the personal security of having backup power should grid issues or weather require).