Tesla executives like Elon Musk and ardent supporters like legendary billionaire investor Ron Baron have always maintained that the company’s energy department has the potential to be as large, or even larger, than its electric vehicle division. So far, Tesla Energy’s growth has been quite subdued, but there are notable signs that the company is getting serious in ramping its solar and battery storage business.
Among the latest of these signs lie in the mass number of job openings for Solar Roof installers currently active on the company’s Careers page. Based on the listings, Tesla appears to be looking for a large number of Solar Roof installers across the United States, from its home state of California to Texas and all the way to Hawaii. As observed by Tesla investor Warren Redlich in a Twitter post, there seem to be about 100 jobs related to Solar Roof installations currently active as of today.
The Solar Roof, which is currently in its third iteration, is Tesla’s flagship solar product. Solar Roof tiles are quite unique in the way that the tiles have the appearance of regular roofing material, but are capable of functioning as solar panels. This allows customers to enjoy the benefits of a photovoltaic system without compromising the overall aesthetics of their homes. The tiles were initially unveiled in 2016, but due to constant refinements, a ramp of the Solar Roof V3 tiles only started earlier this year.
Yet despite the delays on its ramp, the growth of Solar Roof installations has been notable. In its Q2 2020 Update Letter, Tesla noted that Solar Roof installations have tripled in the second quarter compared to Q1 2020. This is quite notable, especially considering that the United States was dealing with the effects of the pandemic at the time. Considering the number of job listings for Solar Roofers in Tesla’s Careers page today, it appears that the increase in Solar Roof installations will not be subsiding in Q3 2020.
During the second-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk explained that products like the Solar Roof are incredibly pertinent to Tesla’s overall goals. Tesla aims to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainability, and to accomplish this, the company would have to offer products that could enable customers to generate their own power. Conventional solar panels and novel solar shingles like the Solar Roof address this need.
“I think long term, Tesla Energy will be roughly the same size as Tesla automotive. The energy business collectively is bigger than the automotive business. So you say like, how big is the energy sector, big in automotive. And in order to achieve a sustainable energy future, we have to have sustainable energy generation, which I think is going to be primarily solar and — followed by wind. And those are intermittent, so you need to have a lot of batteries to store the energy because wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine.
“So, there’s like three elements of the sustainable energy future. Wind and solar sustainable energy generation, battery storage, and electric transport. Those three things. And the mission of Tesla is to accelerate sustainable energy. So that kind of says enough. The battery [Indecipherable] will both be enormous and they kind of have to be in order for us to have a sustainable future and we’ve got a great product road map on that front as well,” Musk said.
