In This Article:
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Tesla employees say that the company has discouraged them from selling two of the company's energy products, Powerwalls and Solar Roof tiles, for months.
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CEO Elon Musk recently announced a broad restructuring at Tesla and cuts to at least 9 percent of the company's staff; its residential energy team was particularly hard hit.
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Tesla acquired SolarCity in 2016 for $2.6 billion. The residential solar business was funded by Musk and founded by his cousins.
Several employees who were laid off from Tesla's energy team this week, and others survived the layoffs so far, are questioning whether Tesla is essentially winding down what was SolarCity.
[ so what graf. what was solar city? why is it interesting that they're no longer hyping these products?]
[layoffs. concentrated in energy division?] Tesla also wound down an agreement with Home Depot to sell its home energy products through the retail chain.
But Tesla energy and retail employees say that managers discouraged them from selling Powerwall home energy storage systems and glass Solar Roof tiles for months.
According to a weekly Global Sales and Services newsletter for employees dated June 12, the company is now encouraging retail employees to now focus on sales of used Model S and Model X vehicles instead of focusing on its home energy products. The letter mentioned many features of its cars, but did not mention the solar residential business at all.
[comment from Tesla]
Why the focus shifted
One energy employee explained that production of the Powerwall slowed this year as Tesla struggled to produce enough batteries for its vehicles, and routed available inventory to commercial and power grid projects including in hurricane-stricken Puerto Rico.
Several of these people said that Tesla's solar roof tiles are nowhere near ready for mass-market production. In its 2018 annual shareholders' meeting on June 5th, Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged the company is still beta-testing its "Solar Roof":
"We're spending a lot of time validating the solar roof because they need to last at least 30 years, ideally longer. There's only so much accelerated life testing you can do on a roof. Before we can deploy it to a large number of houses, we need to make sure all elements of the roof will last," he said, "ideally a half a century or more."
One current field energy advisor for Tesla also said there was a hiring freeze in the company impacting all but vehicle production for at least two months.
So while customers were eager to buy the Powerwalls and solar roof tiles, high-level managers instructed energy staff, across all regions, to just sell or lease out traditional panels, and do what they could to handle a backlog of customers' maintenance and installation needs.