In CA, it is illegal for HOA to block solar installations

Also in Florida, surprisingly.

And Arizona.

What is HOA?

Crazy US shit, never heard of it anywhere else. Basically a group of your neighbours who say what you can and cant do to your own property.

Here in the UK we have "planning permission" which is basically the same thing. Round our way it's been used recently e.g. to stop people extending their houses over their off-street parking, which would necessitate them parking on the road - if everyone did it the street would be impassable, so it's fair to enforce that no-one does it.

Planning permission is granted or refused by the council though, based on the need and impact on surrounding areas. A HOA can stop you hanging your laundry out to dry on a line, force you to water your lawn x times a week, prevent you painting your house a particular colour, prevent you installing a fence, determine they type of vehicle you are allowed and whether it can be parked on your drive or if it must be in a garage. It is not really comparable to planning permission which is really only required for significant construction work or change of use ie. Shop to residential or vice versa.

Plus if the HOA members don't like you they can make your life difficult. Planning permission affects everyone equally. If a neighbour can extend a property then more than likely you can too, if you are refused it is likely all similar applications would be refused, you don't know the planning officer and they don't know you so no bias can be involved which make the whole process much fairer.

I actually find neighborhoods with HOAs pretty desirable. Protects me from people moving beside me and destroying my property value.

Just google it. I'm getting tired of seeing so many low effort comments. I used to come here to be informed..

Just imagine if they wrote encyclopedias in your communication style. Completely fictional example:

From Ye Great Book of All Scottish things, 856 year of the Lord, page 17: - yepswatter : a very commonly used household object, just ask anybody around to show you one.

So you can come here for information a few others cannot?

This isn't your personal wikipedia.

> they would not have an objection to these roofs

Unless the HOA rules have a stipulation about your roof shingles exactly matching the other roofs in the neighborhood, which is common. And boring a shit to look at. I hate HOAs so much.

If all they did was protect property values by keeping people from doing outrageous things, I might be okay with them, but they go way beyond that to the point where it diminishes the value of buying property (since you can't adapt it as you see fit). Municipal codes usually take care of the worst behavior, anyhow. Which is why if I ever buy land and/or a house, it will be in a more rural area. Then I can put a damn Tesla solar roof on it, build a shed with a different roof and paint it all purple with green stripes if I feel like it.

I lived in an HOA that took their rules way too far. Here is an example - paraphrased so your head doesn't explode: "You can't have any wireless devices without written permission, except a garage door opener and TV remote."

Right. Nice try. I joked with neighbors that we should all send one letter to them on the same day. A letter for each cell phone, wifi router, satellite dish, bluetooth speaker, etc.

This was in an area where many people were on wireless ISPs, there were a handful of ham radio antennas, etc. I asked someone on the HOA board why they didn't update or remove the garbage about wireless devices. The answer - it would cost to much to update the documents, so they don't try to enforce it. It is still crazy that they ever put it in there.

This HOA says no solar, but now that it is popular they also ignoring that.

This product strategy certainly seems easy to copy, I agree. That's good for humanity and bad for Elon financially (I think that's the point for him, I don't think he cares about money outside of more commas).

The product itself might be easy to copy, but im not so sure about the product *strategy". Solarcity does the full stack, from the solar panels to the installation to the management and storage. That's going to be hard for a Chinese factory to reproduce.

I don't think he cares about copies. Tesla is poised to be a battery company, so copies will probably buy his batteries. At least long enough for Tesla to move up the value chain.

Honestly though, he is freaking Elon Musk. If you don't think he can make the best version of this you are way underestimating what he has accomplished already.

Its all about fundamentals and he believe he can have a fundamental edge here.