For an entrepreneur who thrives on loud and splashy promotion, it’s hard to imagine a more forlorn spot than Tesla’s upstate New York “Gigafactory 2.” Built on the former grounds of a steel mill, the 1.2-million-square-foot complex, which Tesla leases from the taxpayer, was supposed to be the largest facility of its kind in the entire Western hemisphere, capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of solar roofs and panels annually once fully scaled. The massive RiverBend site would then serve as a beacon to other entrepreneurs, attracting more advanced manufacturing jobs to the area.
Some seven years later the lights are still on—but just barely. Wood Mackenzie estimated aggregate Tesla Solar Roof installations in the U.S. just recently hit 3,000 since the product launched—not even enough to produce a measly 30 megawatts of electricity in total. For context, Musk had aspired to a goal of installing 1,000 roofs per week. While the solar market grows, deployments of all Tesla solar products barely eked out a 1% increase in the past year, deploying 348 MW of capacity—and so far in 2023 it is tracking toward an annual decline of nearly a third. The bulk of its business remains selling conventional photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, where it lacks a unique selling point or first mover edge.
