According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s numerous testimonials, it seems pretty clear that the solar roof is being built in Buffalo.
But pv magazine has found evidence that the solar roof tile is coming from China, not Buffalo.
Bullish on building in Buffalo
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been bullish about solar roof production in Tesla’s factory in Buffalo, New York.
In October of last year, Musk said, “Tesla expects to be producing about 1,000 solar roofs per week in Buffalo within a few months,” adding, “We will grow this exponentially. It might be doubling this every month.”
“This is all going to be produced at the Giga New York, our factory in Buffalo, where people have been working really hard. And I’d just like to say it, our appreciation for the team there. They’ve really been putting in a pretty huge effort to ramp-up production of the solar glass roof.”
“We’ll definitely make New York proud about that factory,” Musk said during that conference call. “It’s going to be great.”
“We’re ramping up as fast as we possibly can, starting in the next few weeks,” Musk said, at the time, adding, “It’s really primarily just for the solar glass roof. That’s what our Buffalo factory will focus on.”
But the box says Changzou
pv magazine has been hunting down these innovative and beautiful integrated solar roofs and documenting the progress of these installations. Here’s our most recent photo gallery of solar roof installs.
However, while photographing day 6 of this roof installation in Northern California:
We noticed these boxes full of solar glass roof tiles:
And the labels read:
Based on that label, one might conclude that these boxes of solar roof tiles were coming from Changzou Almaden Co. on Qinglong East Road in Changzou, Jiangzhou, China — 7,135 miles from Buffalo, New York.
A recent Wall Street Journal article called Changzhou Almaden “a supplier of solar glass to Tesla” with a stock price that “has more than doubled in the past month.”
There’s nothing wrong with building product in China. It usually makes economic sense.
But that doesn’t explain Musk’s insistence that the product is ramping-up in Buffalo. Perhaps some of the glass tile is built in Buffalo and assembled in China.
We’ve reached out to Alan Cooper, Director of Global Communications and Ignoring Press Inquiries at Tesla, as well as other Tesla press contacts for information on where these tiles are built. We have not yet received a response.
The Buffalo News noted, “Tesla and its [former?] partner, Panasonic, employ around 800 people in Buffalo, but that work force needs to nearly double to 1,460 by mid-April or Tesla could be hit with a $41.3 million penalty by the state, which spent $750 million in taxpayer funds to build, and partially equip, the factory.”
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I understand that Musk is having Tesla’s built in China as well. Anyone know the veracity of this story?China is going into the EV in a big way and the economy of scale may be a contributing factor.
Just be honest with everyone. That would be so REFRESHING from a leader. We haven’t had that in a long time.
The EVs built in China are for China and eventually the Asian area and Australia. They are also the 3 and Y and likely the Semi. He’s stated that many times. The US will continue with the S And X worldwide. And continue to supply the Americas with the 3,Y Semi and Europe till the factory there ramps up.
I desire that the whole world gets on board with Solar and EV’s and soon. Time is running out.
If China leads the way in this area, then so be it if we lack the imagination to create this world.
Musk needs to build his narrative about Tesla-built solar roof because of ongoing lawsuit related to Tesla and Solarcity acquisition. Also the state of NY pumped hundreds of millions to provide the factory with necessary equipment to Tesla to produce solar panels. Now it seems this was just a waste of taxpayers money.
You can’t just “build a narrative” by lying, that’s probably a form of fraud in a public company.
I wonder how many schemes like this Musk and friends have gotten away with… Besides battery swap ZEV credit scam, and the solar roof event/solarcity merger…. the totally botched production launches of S/X/3, along with secretly trying to sell the company to Google in 2013 shortly after Model S was released, and lying about 3s being built by hand in late 2017, because there was NO real production capacity at all…
Completely fudging auto-pilot statistics by comparing AP miles with ALL MILES, LOL
But that doesn’t explain Musk’s insistence that the product is ramping-up in Buffalo. Perhaps some of the glass tile is built in Buffalo and assembled in China.
He follows POTUS who is never honest , the fact check shows it runs to something like 10 a day. TESLA is the same, his car factory is yet to make 1$ profit and never produced the promised cars since inception.
Eric, you can see a picture I just posted in my shared photo album showing the label of an active solar tile. Made in America. The passive tiles appear to be originating from China. So are the cables on the active tiles. It’s 2020 and supply chains are global.
Greg, thanks for this.
As I mentioned in my article — nothing wrong with making things in China. It’s a smart business decision in many cases. Why is Musk insisting that it’s all made in Buffalo?
Charlie Ricketts please provide photos as proof that you saw the Tesla Solar tiles being manufactured at Tesla Fremont, CA plant.
Musk is seem more and more like Trump “It’s going to be great”
(Trust, But, Verify!) Our President, Donald J. Trump, our Governor, Cuomo, of New York State, should Fully Investigate whether the Federal government and NY state were taken for a ride. The Elon Musk’s Solar Glass Tiles Buffalo, New York factory is in business producing the Best Solar Glass Tiles. $750.000.000.00 (Million) NY State Taxpayers Dollars are at Stake.
Make sure that this Factory is Real and Transparent, producing this product. We want, desire and Demand … (Made In America!) Nothing less. Produce the product. And/Or, Give Back All the Money!
Consumers Alert. Buyer’s, beware.
They are built in Fremont. I’ve seen the machine used to print them.
That’s unfortunate if the whole thing is made in China. My understanding of solar panels is the cells are made in China then the US made panels are assembled here with those cells. Is that true? If so, there is no complete US made solar…
Can you go back to your source and get a photo of the tiles inside the box? My understanding is that the solar roof is made up of both pure glass (non-energized, for shaded portions or areas around penetrations) and solar tiles, with the visual appearance between the two being very close, since even the non solar tiles have electrical connections, acting as pass-though connections. The photo at the start of the article is one of the pure glass panels, you can tell because when observed straight on(vs a flat angle from the ground), the PV cells are visible through the glass.
I believe Tesla already talked about having the pure glass tiles manufactured by a supplier (china?) while Giga Buffalo focused their production capacity on molding solar tiles?
@Kenneth Schleich
I believe you are wrong about it. There are two versions of solar roof purely for aesthetics, that Tesla claimed to produce. One with actual solar installation and one just for the looks to keep the roof look@feel consistent (as obviously not the whole roof need to be covered in solars, this is unnecessary and overly expensive).
I’m following Tesla quite closely and cannot recall anything about chinese supplier. They always claimed to make all of them themselves.
Instead of focussing on Battery Storage EV’s…. that are expensive to buy… then replace the expensive Batteries again in a few years… and then clean up the mess (who pays..??) left behind by these massive batteries “after death”… I believe attention should be given to progress on CAV’s (Compressed Air Vehicles)… low(er) Capital Cost… no (exoensive) Battery to replace or toxic wastes to get rid off…. and free Air Conditioning too…
A major Vehicle manufacturer in India… TATA MOTORS (also Owner of Jaguar etc..) has “gone down this path” of CAV’s…. but no news so far… is it being killed by the Lithium/Battery Industry & Investors??