Yahoo Finance Tesla (TSLA) Begins Solar Roof Production at Buffalo Plant
Per Reuters, Tesla Inc. TSLA has initiated production of its premium solar roof tiles from December 2017. Located at Buffalo, NY, the automaker’s Gigafactory 2 is earmarked as the production facility of these rooftop-solar systems.
Additionally, the company started surveying the homes of customers, who made an advance payment of $1,000 last year, for booking Tesla’s solar roof tiles.
Introduced in October 2016, this solar roof production is in sync with the company’s strategy to unveil options that are free of fossil fuels.
Tesla Inc. Price and Consensus
Tesla Inc. Price and Consensus | Tesla Inc. Quote
At the time of introduction, the company had announced to get the product ready for installation by the summer of 2017. Accordingly, last May, the company had also started taking orders for the solar roof tiles, for which, customers had even shelled out an initial advance amount via Tesla’s web site. The company now expects the product’s first installations to commence in the subsequent months of 2018.
Per management, pricing of these solar roofs would be 10-15% less than the traditional solar roofs with solar panels.
Notably, Tesla has partnered with Panasonic for solar roof production at its Buffalo factory and has almost 500 employees working at the site.
The company claims that it will accomplish more than 1 gigawatt of cell and module output in double capacity at the hub. However, it has not provided any deadline to meet that target.
Per Tesla, its primary focus is to increase its Model 3 sedan production, for which, it plans to manufacture 2,500 units a week by the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2018. Notably, this new target is half the quantity the company had promised beforehand.
Price Performance
Shares of Tesla have soared 45.3% in a year, outperforming the 17.7% rise of the industry it belongs to.
Zacks Rank & Key Picks
Tesla carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the auto space are Oshkosh Corporation OSK, Lear Corporation LEA and Gentex Corporation GNTX, all carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Oshkosh has an expected long-term growth rate of 16.5%. In the last three months, shares of the company have increased 7.5%.
Lear has an expected long-term growth rate of 7.1%. In the last three months, shares of the company have climbed 9.5%.
Gentex has an expected long-term growth rate of 9.7%. In the last three months, shares of the company have jumped 8.3%.
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