A judge has found Tesla liable for fraud, in a long-running lawsuit over a disastrous solar panel installation.

Like many of its experimental products, Tesla’s Solar Roof — a solar panel array engineered to look like discreet roof tiles — has been a stunning failure. Nowhere is that flop more apparent than on the roof of Ambrose Conroy, a California homeowner who’s spent over six years battling with Tesla over the solar installation from hell.

According to Electrek, the whole saga began back in 2020, when Conroy entered an agreement to buy a 13.1 kW photovoltaic system from Tesla. Though the process was supposed to take a few weeks, it ran years late, as compounding errors and logistical disasters threw the project into chaos.

  • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    17 hours ago

    From what I understand their home batteries are well regarded too.

    I had solar installed on my house this year, Tesla was never in the running because I don’t buy Nazi shit but doing my research there was a lot of positive things said about it.

    I went sigenergy instead and it has been amazing.

    • CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world
      41·
      12 hours ago

      I read a long time ago the Powerwall was made as an afterthought for what to do with old batteries from dead or salvaged teslas. They would strip the packs, test the individual cells and those that pass went into powerwalls.

      • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        11 hours ago

        Honestly I have no problem with that, in fact I wish it was more common, seems a good way to get extra life out of a big battery.

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          3 hours ago

          It’s not the worst idea, but a better one would be to repair the battery pack and put the car back on the road, unless the car itself is damaged in some other way. EV battery replacements tend to cost more than half of the car’s MSRP and it’s a bit of a problem for the longevity for older EVs. Newer ones supposedly have longer lasting batteries, but since they’re newer, we don’t know for sure yet.

          • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 hours ago

            Even older ones have longer lasting batteries than we expected, it turns out.

            But the reason this makes sense is because it’s not easy to “repair” a battery back to 100% and that’s what you would want in your car, but that massive battery pack at 80% SoC works pretty well for a house battery.

            40kWh is like the minimum you’d want in a fully electric car but a typical household only needs like 1/3 of that.