There's no substantiation of that either way.
I have a SolarCity install that came with the house.
The Power Purchase Agreement lease seemed shady at first, but ultimately I believe it's working out better for my family than for Tesla.
I'm paying just under 11 cents per kWh and it can only go up a maximum of 3% per year for the next ~15 years.
The result is that solar generally has a generation cost of ~$0.04/kWh (which includes the cost of the land) but meanwhile you have customers happy to be paying $0.11/kWh. The trade off is the one-time cost of installing it on individual roofs is more labor intensive than doing a large-scale installation in a field somewhere, but that just means it's competitive rather than having a massive advantage.
You can absolutely draw adverse inferences from Tesla's refusal to report certain straightforward, useful numbers. For example, their refusal to publish any real safety statistics, to the point where Elon Musk himself has to invoke rubbish numbers like the 'community tracker'.
If, after all the lawsuits and accusations of failure, and the reporting about the near-zero deliveries and idled factories, the Tesla Energy division is giving you no numbers on the solar roof, and is lumping them together with a totally different product like batteries, there is one thing and only one thing that that means: the numbers are awful.
I don't think that's the true at all. There's a vast and visible footprint we can see with batteries (pretty sure every major solar company in the U.S. that has a battery storage option does at least some Tesla) that has no equivalent with solar rooftops. The former are ubiquitous while the latter are so far as I can tell almost entirely non existent.
And if that's too light on data I'll put it this way, I'm reasonably confident I can find 10 solar companies that install Tesla batteries for every one that does Solar City roofs.
Even if its low for solar, it doesn't mean it was a bad deal. He acquired existing customers he could sell other products to.
It breaks my heart because my rust belt hometown got a substantial investment from the state they had been chasing for a couple decades.
$700M of the Buffalo Billion went to a Solar City facility, Elon even said they were going to build the solar roofs there!
New York State didn't dare pick a fight with him as the factory set empty for years.
Full story via Bethany McLean, 2019:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-elon-musk-gamble...
I suspect most of the business is battery storage and the Powerwall was introduced by Tesla before the acquisition.
According to the company filings the solar assets Tesla acquired are still generating revenue at the rates projected during the acquisition.
But even if it's true I assume they are including their utility-scale solar and battery packs, which has nothing to do with Solar City: the panels are generic, the customer lists are not residential, they don't use the fancy shingles. Solar City did not help them in any way with these getting or fulfilling these contracts.
If you have evidence that’s not the case, that would be interesting to share.
For what it's worth, I don't even know what the inverse position would be, SolarCity was a solar panel maker, and famously, the idea after they realized they couldn't come close to China's prices, was solar roof tiles. They would be a major breakthrough project that would make Solar City a breakout financial hit.
Do people think Tesla makes solar panels? Solar roofs?
I don't blame them, I guess, this carnival has been going on for years.
I'm somewhat surprised how dedicated you are to avoiding information and asking for someone, anyone, to give info. It's been 18 hours and 3 replies on your end, albeit without people taking the time to spell it out to you like this. Personally, I would have looked into it a bit myself.
> It's been 18 hours and 3 replies on your end
You appear nowhere in comments I replied to. Is this your alt account?