Elon Musk teased his solar roof to analysts long before the product was anywhere close to ready (TSLA)

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June 7, 2017 4:25 PM

Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined a SolarCity earnings call in August to tease his solar roof before it was close to market ready.

In a SolarCity earnings call in August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk outlined his vision for a beautiful solar roof, as a symbol of why Tesla buying SolarCity was a "logical" and "quite obvious" decision to skeptical analysts. But the product was nowhere close to ready.

That's according to a feature by Fast Company's Austin Carr that details the story of SolarCity's rapid ascent in the early 2000s, its downfall, and the skepticism surrounding Tesla's eventual acquisition of the solar-panel installer.

While Musk was teasing a solar roof that looked better and lasted longer than a normal roof, employees were scrambling to develop a prototype that matched that vision.

A few weeks after the August 9 earnings call, Peter Rive, SolarCity's cofounder and Musk's cousin, and Zep Solar, a SolarCity subsidiary, invited Musk to see their latest prototype, internally dubbed Steel Pulse.

"Musk hated it — telling the team, according to two sources, that they were wasting his time with this 'piece of s---' — but he liked the underlying concept," the Fast Company report said. A Tesla representative told Fast Company that Musk had liked the idea of Steel Pulse, just not the first iteration.

Within a few weeks, the SolarCity employees put together the concepts Musk showed off during a public demo at Universal Studios in late October.

Tesla has started accepting orders for two of its four solar-shingle options, and installations are expected to begin this year.

The Fast Company feature provides some insight into Musk's brilliant, if risky, marketing strategy. Before a prototype existed, Musk was using the solar roof to relay his vision of a solar ecosystem that includes Tesla's at-home battery, the Powerwall, and its line of electric vehicles. The solar roof was an integral part of convincing shareholders and analysts that an electric-car maker and solar-panel installer was a simple, obvious pairing.

Read the Fast Company feature »

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