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Tesla’s new Solar Glass Roof tiles are the first version ready for a wide rollout

Elon Musk has unveiled a redesign of Tesla’s Solar Roof tiles, dubbed “Solar Glass Roof.” The new roof design will cost around $42,500 for a 2,000-square-foot roof with 10kW of solar capacity before tax credits (or about $21.25 per square foot), according to Tesla’s website, though pricing will vary by size and location. The new roof will come with a 25-year warranty, and be offered in a dark tempered glass finish to start, though Musk said Friday he hopes to unveil new designs “every six to nine months.”

The new version of the Solar Roof is the third design Tesla has come up with, and the company says it should be cheaper and quicker to install than version two, which is what Tesla was selling before Friday’s announcement. With version two, Musk told reporters, Tesla was “basically trying to not lose money” on each installation, in part because that version of the roof needed additional work done after it left the factory and arrived at a home. He called them “quite artisanal,” and compared their installation to “building airplanes and you finish your construction on the runway.”

“It just wasn’t a version that was worth scaling,” Musk said.

The new Solar Glass Roof, however, is the first version he feels comfortable scaling production-wise thanks to a simpler design with fewer parts and sub-assemblies. Musk compared the progress to how other technologies tend to need a few iterations before they gain wide adoption. “Windows 1 or 2 didn’t really work, frankly,” he said, presumably referring to Microsoft’s early operating systems.

The billionaire CEO claimed the new roof tiles, which are bigger and more power dense, will help “make roofs come alive,” creating a world “where you look around the neighborhood and the roofs are all gathering energy.”

“I think in the future, it will be odd for roofs to not gather energy,” Musk said.

The promise of the Solar Roof has always been an enticing one. Pay a premium over standard solar panels, and you can get a normal-looking tiled roof that will suck up the sun’s energy all the same. It won’t be for everyone, though. Musk tweeted on Thursday that the Solar Roof will “only make financial sense for new houses or replacement roofs.” If a potential customer’s roof is more than five years away from needing to be replaced, he said, they’re better off going with a standard solar panel setup.

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