Tesla’s abrupt decision to kill its Solar Roof has left the third-party contractors who sold and installed the product absorbing the fallout — including some who told Electrek they sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into the program and now have little to show for it.
Tesla stopped supplying the solar tiles in August, notifying its network of certified installers that it would ship only conventional solar panels going forward.
A product few could sell, killed overnight
The scale of the retreat is striking. Over roughly seven years, Tesla installed only about 3,000 Solar Roof systems across the US, peaking at just 21 to 32 installations a week — more than 95% short of Elon Musk’s repeated promise of 1,000 weekly installations by 2019-2020.
We reported last month that Tesla discontinued the Solar Roof after deciding internally that the product “is not financially viable”. The tesla.com/solarroof page now redirects to the company’s solar panel page, and “Solar Roof” has been stripped from the Energy navigation menu. It was the quiet end of a product that had been on life support for more than a year.
Installers say the training alone cost them
The people left cleaning up are the certified roofers and solar contractors Tesla leaned on to actually put the product on houses.
In a report published this week, Roofing Contractor spoke to several of them, including Elevated Roofing & Siding in Dayton, Ohio, PGT Home Energy Solutions in Tempe, Arizona, Westfall Roofing in Florida, and Saguaro Solar, Electric & Roofing in Tucson.
Becoming a Solar Roof installer was not a weekend course. Contractors had to send crews to multi-week training on the West Coast, and some were required to complete three supervised installations before they were certified.
“It wasn’t simply taking a training; there was investment in learning the system,” Westfall Roofing president Ryan Westfall told the outlet.
That investment produced a product that took roughly two-plus weeks to install, versus about two days for a conventional rack-mounted solar system. Now contractors are scrambling to redesign active projects or swap in alternative systems mid-pipeline.
The installers left holding the bag
Electrek also spoke with installers who said they had poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into supporting the Solar Roof — building crews, tooling, and training around it — and are now left with almost nothing to show for it.
Several were reluctant to say so publicly. They still carry other Tesla energy products, including solar panels and Powerwall, and worried that criticizing the company openly could jeopardize those relationships.
That is the bind Tesla’s certified installers are in: dependent on a brand that just walked away from a product line they built a business around, while still needing to sell its remaining hardware.
Warranty and service questions linger
Tesla has said it will honor existing warranties and continue to provide replacement parts for the existing Solar Roof systems already installed. Contractors aren’t convinced that will hold up over the 25-year life of these roofs.
PGT Home Energy Solutions owner Greg Field expressed skepticism about long-term parts availability, and Exact Solar’s Aaron Nichols warned of a “much higher labor cost for anyone needing help,” given how labor-intensive the tiles are to service and how complex their electrical connections are.
Todd Miller of Isaiah Industries argued Tesla treated the Solar Roof primarily as a piece of solar technology rather than a roofing product — and underestimated the complexity of the roofing business it was wading into.
Electrek’s Take
Our earlier reporting that Tesla was phasing out its own installations in favor of third-party certified installers reads very differently in hindsight.
At the time, handing installation to a network of local certified contractors looked like a rational retreat from what Tesla itself called a “low-margin, labor-heavy, local business.” But the abrupt killing of the Solar Roof hurt those installers far more than it hurt Tesla — precisely because Tesla had already gotten out of the business of carrying and installing the product.
Tesla offloaded the hardest, least profitable part of the Solar Roof — the physical install and the customer relationship — onto small local companies, let them absorb the training and tooling costs, and then pulled the product out from under them. Tesla keeps a manageable warranty liability on 3,000 roofs. The installers keep the stranded investment, the abandoned pipelines, and the awkward job of servicing a discontinued product for the next two decades.
Building-integrated solar isn’t dead, and several of these contractors say they’d do it again — but only for a manufacturer that commits to long-term support and parts. After watching Tesla treat its partners this way, how many will trust the next company that comes knocking?
Thinking about rooftop solar despite Tesla’s exit? It makes sense because solar panels are much more affordable than solar roof tiles. A trusted, hassle-free way to go solar is through EnergySage. They provide free, no-obligation quotes from vetted, pre-screened installers in your area, so you can compare options with real transparency. Unbiased Energy Advisors help you every step of the way, at no cost to you. Plus, financing options like $0-down solar loans and leases/PPAs mean there’s no upfront cost to going solar. Get your free quotes here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
