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What is racking?

Tesla was interested in a solar division, but it wasn’t high on their list of priorities. It was something Elon thought would make sense, but at that time, SolarCity was bankrupt, and it was his cousins, so he bought it to solve that bankruptcy problem.

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They did not produce those panels?

No, that was an idea they wanted to do, but it never happened. They were buying panels out of China, just like everybody else. They would give you a contract to lease the system, and they would install it and operate them.

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I guess that's what always takes time. It needs to be figured out; the engineering, and the details behind it. Elon is criticized for that, but it needs to be created.

Essentially, Tesla had no real cost in building or running this factory. But now they had two problems. For one, Elon didn't want the output of the factory. Panasonic was making standard modules, and Elon didn’t want standard modules, he wanted solar roof modules. Then, Panasonic was making expensive modules, so they could not compete with cheaper Chinese products. If you install standard modules, why would you buy expensive Panasonic models unless you can get cheap Chinese modules.

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