Whether the panels themselves are a commodity doesn't matter -- it may actually be advantageous by lowering the capital cost required for installation. The user wants to buy the whole experience -- the panels, with a home battery to store and serve as a backup maybe, and a car all controlled through one app.
Right now you can go on Tesla.com and in five minutes you can order a Tesla for lease at $399 / month and rent a solar system for your roof at $50 a month to fuel the car. You're completely off the grid, prepared for the apocalypse, and no polluting the air. That's very compelling.
I'm talking about the economics and moat that Tesla has itself, with which the fact that the panels are a commodity matter a great deal. This makes Tesla a servicing/financing company, and why do they have a systematic advantage at that over competition? That doesn't seem like a high margin business that is going to justify Tesla's lofty valuation (especially when their solar installations have gone down close to ~90% since the acquisition of SolarCity, and their competitors now have greater market share than they do).
> Another advantage they have is a very simple online ordering system -- try getting a quote for solar somewhere else vs ordering on Tesla.com
Is this really a long term advantage? One, producing a website to have simple online ordering is not a problem for any company on this sort of scale, and two, how big an advantage is this? This isn't a sort of purchase on a whim like a new book on Amazon, these are long term planning decisions for a given family.
They're going to do the math and figure out what might actually be best for their electricity usage, home, and financial situation. Simple ordering isn't that huge of an advantage.
> another advantage they have is asthetics
Again, why is this something not easily copied?
> and also integration with the same app you use to control your car
Is this really that big an advantage? I don't know who is making multi-thousand dollar a year decisions based on this.
This is "no one goes there anymore because it's so crowded" argument.
Solar is big business and will become even bigger (because the economics are great and becoming even better).
Commodity or not, some company will make good money there. That company could be Tesla.
As to blanket "commodity" argument: McDonald sells hamburgers, Coca-Cola sells flavored water in a glass bottle and StarBucks sells coffee in a plastic cup. There's money to be made in commodity businesses if you are big enough, have the economies of scale and the leading brand.
> This is "no one goes there anymore because it's so crowded" argument.
This is a very true argument about the margins/economics of a business. If it is easy for competition to enter, it becomes very hard to make a high-margin, valuable business out of it.
> As to blanket "commodity" argument: McDonald sells hamburgers, Coca-Cola sells flavored water in a glass bottle and StarBucks sells coffee in a plastic cup.
All of these have substantial moats in either brand, training, or real estate. In what way does Tesla have any of these (brand matters far less for larger financial decisions like this) and why is it any advantage to any of these areas to have this attached to an electric car company?
And in this area, they already are no longer the leading brand, and have fallen behind many other solar companies.
Why? It seems like a flooded and commodified utility market, the opposite of something with great economics.