Tesla pulls plug on Home Depot solar plan
Tesla had big plans to sell its residential clean energy products at Home Depot. The plan called for about 800 of the retailer’s stores to carry renewable energy merchandise, including solar panels.
But that’s not the case anymore. In an email to employees, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that his company is pulling out of its arrangement with Home Depot. Instead, Tesla will sell the products at its own store and online.
The move is conjunction with a 9% workforce reduction plan Tesla disclosed yesterday.
“In addition to this company-wide restructuring, we’ve decided not to renew our residential sales agreement with Home Depot in order to focus our efforts on selling solar power in Tesla stores and online. The majority of Tesla employees working at Home Depot will be offered the opportunity to move over to Tesla retail locations,” Musk told Tesla employees.
After the email was leaked to the media, Musk shared the entire memo via his Twitter feed.
“Tesla has grown and evolved rapidly over the past several years, which has resulted in some duplication of roles and some job functions that, while they made sense in the past, are difficulty to justify today,” Musk wrote.
Tesla bought SolarCity Corp., a national solar panel installer, in 2016 for $2 billion. SolarCity sold products through The Home Depot under its own brand, which was later folded into the Tesla banner.
In the past 15 years, Tesla has yet to turn an annual profit and has only posted two quarters of profits during that span.
This past February Tesla said it was setting up kiosks in 600 Home Depot stores with a total of 800 planned. The kiosks will now be removed by the end of the year, according to Tesla.
The Home Depot operates 2,200 locations in the United States.
But that’s not the case anymore. In an email to employees, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that his company is pulling out of its arrangement with Home Depot. Instead, Tesla will sell the products at its own store and online.
The move is conjunction with a 9% workforce reduction plan Tesla disclosed yesterday.
“In addition to this company-wide restructuring, we’ve decided not to renew our residential sales agreement with Home Depot in order to focus our efforts on selling solar power in Tesla stores and online. The majority of Tesla employees working at Home Depot will be offered the opportunity to move over to Tesla retail locations,” Musk told Tesla employees.
After the email was leaked to the media, Musk shared the entire memo via his Twitter feed.
“Tesla has grown and evolved rapidly over the past several years, which has resulted in some duplication of roles and some job functions that, while they made sense in the past, are difficulty to justify today,” Musk wrote.
Tesla bought SolarCity Corp., a national solar panel installer, in 2016 for $2 billion. SolarCity sold products through The Home Depot under its own brand, which was later folded into the Tesla banner.
In the past 15 years, Tesla has yet to turn an annual profit and has only posted two quarters of profits during that span.
This past February Tesla said it was setting up kiosks in 600 Home Depot stores with a total of 800 planned. The kiosks will now be removed by the end of the year, according to Tesla.
The Home Depot operates 2,200 locations in the United States.