Featured Tesla Model 3 will probably have a solar roof option – maybe even ‘deployable’, says CEO Elon Musk

How do you draw people's attention away from the technologies you're trying announce? You roll out your pre-production Model 3 out of the garage.

Tesla Model 3 makes a rare cameo at the solar roof event [Video]

 

Sounds deplorable.

I am not a fan of Bob Lutz but his re-worked Fiskers, the ones he guts to put in a Corvette engine and drive train, includes replacing a 'solar roof' with a carbon fiber. But I saw a Fisker at the 2009 Detroit Autoshow and hated it on sight(*). Lutz claims the solar roof was useless but I felt the Fisker was pretty poor of a long, long list.

Lutz reworks the Fiskers for the joy of gutting an apparently lame electric drive system (**). More likely the Fisker because he hasn't figured out how to get a Tesla to gut and put in a Corvette drive. My understanding is he charges north of $200,000.

Bob Wilson

* - Went to the Fisker booth to find out about the 'pedestrian noise' generator. So I asked the attractive young lady about it and I heard "synthetic whore" when she meant "synthetic roar." Never did get to hear the 'pedestrian noise' generator and still haven't.

** - There is a delusional lie that hybrid cars are a gaudy style statement. IMHO that was Fisker's design goal which matches Lutz's prejudice. I could not think of a better Laural and Hardy skit in real life.

 

i heardof solar shingles a long time ago. would love to see that come about.

 

they're still a tad on the pricy side, but heck, pick your poison -
tratitional?



... or spanish style



with luck, it won't be too long before 20% of all homes have some amount of solar. All new homes in our area are required now days to do it.

As for deployable automotive solar?
you'd need to go this crazy;



Looks pretty aero - i just hope rev II has windows

.

 

At what cost though? It won't be on the $35,000 version.

 

What, you mean we can't have everything for almost nothing? (sigh)

Well . . . there's always the Bolt ...
.

 

no clay tiles up here, but i could probably talk my wife into the shingles.

 

Just blundered across a 2012 Fisker Karma EcoChic hybrid with 40 miles. Original list was $115k. Now $52k. Ugly.

 

You do realize that Fisker was the original Tesla Design that left with Fisker when they went separate ways.

 

Every successful project has multiple 'fathers' claiming 51% credit like "The Producers." Lucid Air claims they designed the Model S. Rivian freely poaches Tesla engineers and proprietary data. Xpang stole Tesla source code that was not offered free and open. The history of Tesla has been the great teacher whose work product walked out the door ... but not the engineering culture needed to go further.

The problem with thieves of technology or reputation is they have limited imagination and creativity. They are like an Oklahoma lake, huge area but no depth. Where were they when Elon was living at the Fremont factory?

Bob Wilson

 

Well the Fisker design would have been the Model S, and that would have been a good thing, as I think Fisker is a fabulous design. Model S needs to be morphed into something more striking at this time.

 

And I heard Lucid claimed the Model 3 too.

Bob Wilson

 

Zombies .... I guess nobody cares this thread originally died several years ago ..... no lame solar car roof - either now or back then.

 

Maybe some wish for a solar roof? Funny how Toyota was able to install a solar roof on the Prius.

 

.... then killed it off due to its impracticality & gimmicky factor.
.

 

I got to go with hill on this one. zombie thread about a feature that didn't make it. Not much of an issue, toyota also doesn't sell their solar roof in north America anymore.

It definitely was technically feasible as lightyear has shown, but I've got to agree with the tesla engineers.
Tesla Model 3 gets a solar roof thanks to Lightyear - Electrek

 

When has that ever stopped them?

I mean, I'd believe a lot of different hypotheses for why they dropped the plan for that feature... but not that.

 

I have the solar roof and on hot summer days it’s super beneficial. So don’t see where it’s a gimmick. But you know what is a gimmick? A Horn that sounds like a fart!