Tesla is an innovation powerhouse. As part of that, it publishes a fair number of patents. We don’t get around to publishing stories on every interesting patent we see, so here’s a quick roundup of Tesla patents published in recent months that we haven’t covered.
A new patent reveals that Tesla is continuing to innovate with its solar roof tile installation process. The new patent was granted to Tesla for a hinged frame with integrated wiring that could speed up the physical installation and significantly simplify the wiring required for solar roof tiles, if implemented.
When Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s Solar Roof tile system back in 2016, he boldly proclaimed that it would cost less than buying a roof and electricity. Since then, we have not seen any data to support his claim, until now.
Elon Musk committed to ramping up Tesla’s efforts to expand its Energy businesses on both the energy storage and the solar side of the equation on the company’s first quarter 2019 investor call earlier this week.
Another Tesla Solar Roof Tile customer has taken to the interwebs to show off his new system, and it gives us a view of what an installed retrofit system looks like. To date, installations of the sexy new Tesla Solar Roof Tiles have only trickled out, but Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the Model Y unveiling last week that, “this is definitely going to be the year of the Solar Roof and Powerwall.”
A new training video released in partnership with Cal Fire details the best practices for rooftop firefighting on houses with a Tesla Solar Roof Tile roof. The video includes footage of firefighters tearing into the panels using a few different techniques and reveals a bit about how the panels are wired.
Bullish billionaire Ron Baron sees such potential with Tesla that he expects his investment firm Baron Capital to make an absolute killing on TSLA stock.
Several reports from customers on Twitter show that Tesla Solar Roof installations are starting to get out into the wild, with non-Tesla employees and even customers without a Tesla now getting rooftops full of Tesla’s Solar Roof Tiles.
The Tesla Q4 report has upsides and a few humbling nods to the skeptics.
Tesla has shared that it began mass production of its new solar roof tiles at its facility in Buffalo, New York, last month. Surveys of the homes of deposit holders are now underway.
