Tesla’s Next Big Challenge Is Bringing Solar Roofs to Superfans
Elon Musk’s latest home-greening technology is starting small, with only the earliest of adopters coming off a multiyear waitlist.
Eric and Tara Neumann with their sons Nick (left) and Sean at their home in San Ramon, Calif.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergEric and Tara Neumann are all-in on Tesla Inc. In the summer of 2018, they got an electric Model 3 sedan with the vanity license plate 800DAYZ, as in how long they waited for the $52,000 electric car after putting down their $1,000 deposit. That December, they bought a used Model X SUV for roughly $69,200. And a few weeks ago, they were among the first in California’s San Francisco Bay Area to get the latest version of Tesla’s Solar Roof installed on their house. The roof setup, which comes with two Tesla home batteries known as Powerwalls, was $83,000, financed through the company.
“When we bought the house, we knew we needed to replace the roof, and we knew we wanted to go solar,” Eric Neumann says in the family’s San Ramon driveway. “We’re both geeks, and we’re both in IT. We didn’t mind having to pay extra.” They put down a $1,000 deposit for a Solar Roof back in 2018, too. Federal and state tax credits took about $10,000 off the price tag for the Model 3; with the roof gear, expected to help offset their electric bill, a federal tax credit will cover about a fourth of the purchase and installation costs.