Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) announced that it would start bundling its solar products with its Powerwall home energy storage system. That means customers won’t be able to buy one without the other, and it starts next week.
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Tesla to start bundling solar products with Powerwall
CEO Elon Musk said that starting next week, Tesla‘s solar panels and solar roof will only be sold as a package with its Powerwall battery pack. Electrek reported exclusively last month that Tesla was planning to stop taking orders for the Powerwall without a solar roof or solar panels.
The tech site added this week that wait times for the Powerwall have been increasing even though the company has been trying to boost production. Tesla even raised the price of the energy storage system two times in only a few months in an attempt to bring its popularity down a notch.
Last month, customers could still buy solar roofs and solar panels without a Powerwall battery, although they couldn’t buy a Powerwall without any solar products. Now the change has been expanded so that customers can’t even buy solar panels or a solar roof without the Powerwall.
Musk also said this week that solar power will now just feed directly into Powerwall.
“Solar power will feed exclusively to Powerwall,” he said. “Powerwall will interface only between utility meter & house main breaker panel, enabling super simple install & seamless whole whose backup during utility dropouts.”
Pricing controversy
Electrek notes that this latest change isn’t a significant one because Tesla had already decided to only sell Powerwall battery packs as part of a solar package. The site believes a “decent chunk” of the company’s solar orders were from people wanting to buy solar products without Powerwall. However, Electrek also said this share was probably no more than half of the total orders for Tesla’s solar products and Powerwall.
One of the benefits of buying Tesla’s solar products was their integration with Powerwall, although the automaker had also partnered with other solar installers to add Powerwall to their products. Tesla is also dealing with a controversy over the pricing of its solar roofs.
The company raised the price of its solar products and Powerwall significantly earlier this month. However, not only was the price raised for new customers, but those who had been waiting a year for installation after their contracts were signed received notifications that the installation of their solar roof would cost tens of thousands of dollars more than what they had expected. Some of those who received the notifications had already spent thousands of dollars to prepare for the installation.
Tesla is part of the Entrepreneur Index, which tracks 60 of the largest publicly traded companies managed by their founders or their founders’ families.
