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Buildots raises $30M to put eyes on construction sites
One year after raising $16 million, construction technology company Buildots is back to claim another $30 million, this time in Series B funding.
Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with participation from previous investors TLV Partners, Future Energy Ventures, Tidhar Construction Group and Maor Investments. This gives the company $46 million in total funding, Roy Danon, co-founder and CEO of Buildots, told TechCrunch.
The three-year-old company, with headquarters in Tel Aviv and London, is leveraging artificial intelligence computer vision technology to address construction inefficiencies. Danon said though construction accounts for 13% of the world’s GDP and employs hundreds of millions of people, construction productivity continues to lag, only growing 1% in the past two decades.
Danon spent six months on construction sites talking to workers to understand what was happening and learned that control was one of the areas where efficiency was breaking down. While construction processes would seem similar to manufacturing processes, building to the design or specs didn’t happen often due to different rules and reliance on numerous entities to get their jobs done first, he said.
Buildots’ technology is addressing this gap using AI algorithms to automatically validate images captured by hardhat-mounted 360-degree cameras, detecting immediately any gaps between the original design, scheduling and what is actually happening on the construction site. Project managers can then make better decisions to speed up construction.
“It even finds events where contractors are installing out of place and streamline payments so that information is transparent and clear,” Danon said. “Buildots also creates a collaborative environment and trust by having a single source telling everyone what is going on. There is no more blaming or cutting corners because the system validates that and also makes construction a healthier industry to work in.”
Buildots went after new funding once it was able to show product market fit and was expanding into other countries. The platform is being utilized on major building projects in countries like the U.S., U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia and China. To meet demand, Buildots will use the new funding to continue that expansion; double the size of its global team with a focus on sales, marketing and R&D; and grow on the business side. Danon’s aim is “to get to the point where we are the standard for every construction site.” The company is also looking at areas outside construction where its technology would be applicable.
Tal Morgenstern, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said he keeps an eye on graduates of the Israel Defense Forces, where the three Buildots founders came from. However, in the case of this company, Lightspeed actually passed on both the seed and Series A.
Morgenstern admits the decision was a mistake, but at the time, he thought the technology Buildots was trying to build “first, impossible and second, I knew construction was difficult to sell into.” He felt that Buildots, with such a premium product, would have a challenge selling to a low-margin industry that was late to adopt technology in general.
By the time the Series B came round, he said Buildots had solved both of those issues, proving that it works, but also that customers were adopting the technology without much sales and marketing. In addition, other solutions in construction tech were still relying on lasers or people to manually input or tap photos.
“Buildots is seamlessly capturing images and providing a level of insights that is so high, and that is why the company is able to command the price structure they have and are receiving interesting commercial results,” Morgenstern said.
Walking around today’s construction site, Danon said the adoption of technology is enabling Buildots to move quickly to build processes for the industry.
As such, the company saw more than 50% growth quarter over quarter over the past year in three of the countries in which it operates. It is now working with four of the top 10 construction companies in Europe and around the world.
“We did a good job selling remotely, but now we need local offices,” Danon added. “We are also sitting on piles of data from construction sites. We learn from one project to another and want to look for the challenges where data will help make a financial impact. It’s a natural next step for the company.”
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Construction robotics company Toggle raises $8M
New York-based construction startup Toggle this morning announced that it has raised an $8 million Series A. The round was led by Tribeca Venture Partners and featured Blackhorn Ventures, Point72 Ventures, New York State and Twenty Seven Ventures. It follows a $3 million seed round raised in late-2019.
Robotics in general have been a massively popular investment target during the pandemic. Construction startups have also begun to heat up. Early this month, Dusty announced a $16.5 million raise for its Field Printer device.
Toggle automates an entirely different part of the construction process. The company’s robotics technology specifically targets rebar, using robotics to assemble the foundational building material at a fraction of the time.
“At a time when global construction is accelerating to an unprecedented pace, Toggle offers a way to add capacity while saving time and cost on some of the largest types of projects,” cofounder and CEO Daniel Blank said in a statement, “We are especially grateful for our partners who are helping us to bring new tools and approaches to the fundamental building block of our built environment with a focus on renewable energy and sustainable urban development.”
Toggle says the new round will go toward expanding production on the tech. That includes increasing headcount and upgrading the production space to a new 50,000 square foot facility.
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Tiger Global leads $30M investment into Briq, a fintech for the construction industry
Briq, which has developed a fintech platform used by the construction industry, has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Tiger Global Management.
The financing is among the largest Series B fundraises by a construction software startup, according to the company, and brings Briq’s total raised to $43 million since its January 2018 inception. Existing backers Eniac Ventures and Blackhorn Ventures also participated in the round.
Briq CEO and co-founder Bassem Hamdy is a former executive at construction tech giant Procore (which recently went public and has a market cap of $10.4 billion) and Canadian software giant CMiC. Wall Street veteran Ron Goldshmidt is co-founder and COO.
Briq describes its offering as a financial planning and workflow automation platform that “drastically reduces” the time to run critical financial processes, while increasing the accuracy of forecasts and financial plans.
Briq has developed a toolbox of proprietary technology that it says allows it to extract and manipulate financial data without the use of APIs. It also has developed construction-specific data models that allows it to build out projections and create models of how much a project might cost, and how much could conceivably be made. Currently, Briq manages or forecasts about $30 billion in construction volume.
Specifically, Briq has two main offerings: Briq’s Corporate Performance Management (CPM) platform, which models financial outcomes at the project and corporate level, and BriqCash, a construction-specific banking platform for managing invoices and payments.
Put simply, Briq aims to allow contractors “to go from plan to pay” in one platform with the goal of solving the age-old problem of construction projects (very often) going over budget. Its longer-term, ambitious mission is to “manage 80% of the money workflows in construction within 10 years.”
The company’s strategy, so far, seems to be working.
From January 2020 to today, ARR has climbed by 200%, according to Hamdy. Briq currently has about 100 employees, compared to 35 a year ago.
Briq has 150 customers, and serves general and specialty contractors from $10 million to $1 billion in revenue. They include Cafco Construction Management, WestCor Companies and Choate Construction and Harper Construction. The company is currently focused on contractors in North America but does have long-term plans to address larger international markets, Hamdy told TechCrunch.
Some context
Hamdy came up with the idea for Santa Barbara, California-based Briq after realizing the vast amount of inefficiencies on the financial side of the construction industry. His goal was to do for construction financials what Procore did to document management, and PlanGrid to construction drawing. He started Briq with his own cash, amassed through secondary sales as Procore climbed the ranks of startups to become a construction industry unicorn.
Briq CEO and co-founder Bassem Hamdy. Image Credits: Briq
“I wanted to figure out how to bring the best of fintech into a construction industry that really guesses every month what the financial outcomes are for projects,” Hamdy told me at the time of the company’s last raise — a $10 million Series A led by Blackhorn Ventures announced in May of 2020. “Getting a handle on financial outcomes is really hard. The vast majority of the time, the forecasted cost to completion is plain wrong. By a lot.”
In fact, according to McKinsey, an astounding 80% of projects run over budget, resulting in significant waste and profit loss.
So at the end of a project, contractors often find themselves having doled out more money and resources than originally planned. This can lead to negative cash flow and profit loss. Briq’s platform aims to help contractors identify outliers, and which projects are more at risk.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Briq has proven to be “extremely valuable” to contractors, Hamdy said.
“In an industry where margins are so thin, we have given contractors the ability to truly understand where they stand on cash, profit and labor,” he added.
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Drone data scanning company Skycatch announces a $25M raise
Skycatch today announced a $25 million raise, led by ADB Ventures and Wavemaker. Founded in 2013, the Bay Area-based company provides centimeter-accurate 3D scanning services, primarily for construction sites and mining operations.
The service has already been rolled out in a number of different locations around the world — with north of 10,000 sites, according to founder and CEO Christian Sanz. The list includes Chile, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Australia, Canada, the U.S., Indonesia, China, Philippines, Thailand and Japan. In particular, the company is seeking to work with sites where connectivity is limited.
“The process of generating high-precision, centimeter-accurate data is extremely difficult. It typically is owned by the laser scanning market,” says Sanz. “Drones, in general, out of the box are not able to achieve that. We saw the true value prop for Skycatch is operating in edge environments where there’s no connection to internet. That’s where we saw the most demand, initially. That is typically mining companies, operating in all of these remote regions.”
Image Credits: Skycatch
The company’s technology works with off-the-shelf drones, including ones manufactured by DJI. It provides the 3D mapping software, as well as a base station with an edge processor, known as the Edge 1. Skycatch is also working with off-the-shelf lidar companies to help capture data in more difficult environments, including underground for mining operations.
“Asian Development Bank (ADB) aims to play a catalytic role to enable technology in infrastructure projects, which result in reduced carbon footprints and increased safety and operational efficiency,” ADB’s Daniel Hersson said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “The enterprise-grade Skycatch technology for capturing, processing and analyzing high accuracy 3D drone data is a critical part to accomplishing that mission.”
The funds will go toward expanding the 50-person company’s sales and marketing team — both of which have been fairly small portions of the company’s overall headcount.
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Now approved in LA, Abodu’s backyard homes can now go from contract to completion in as little as 30 days
Abodu, one of a slew of startup companies pitching backyard homes and office spaces to Californians in an effort to help address the state’s housing shortage, has instituted a new “Quickship” program that can take an order from contract to construction and installation in about 30 days.
Behind the quick turnaround time is a pre-approval process that was first rolled out in Santa Fe and came to Los Angeles in recent weeks.
Abodu began installing homes through a pre-approval process back in 2019, when the city of San Jose created a program that allowed developers of alternative dwelling units to submit plans for pre-approval to cut the time for homeowners.
That approval process means that ADU developers like Abodu can be permitted in one hour. Other ADU developers pre-approved in San Jose, California include Acton ADU, the venture-backed Connect Homes, J. Kretschmer Architect, Mayberry Workshop, Open Remodel and prefabADU. In Los Angeles, La Mas, IT House, Design, Bitches, Connect Homes, Welcome Projects and First Office have all had homes pre-approved for construction.
Beyond the cities where Adobu’s ADUs have received pre-approval, the company has built across California in cities ranging from, Palo Alto, Millbrae, Orange County, LA and Oakland. Units in the Bay Area cost roughly $189,000 as a starting price, compared to the $650,000 to $850,000 it takes to build units in a mid-rise apartment building, or $1 million per unit in a steel-reinforced highrise, according to the company.
“Our Quickship program is the fastest way to add housing,” said John Geary, CEO at Abodu. “Homeowners with immediate needs, be it family situations or those looking for investment income, can now complete an ADU project in as little as four weeks. A key mission for Abodu is to make a serious dent in our state’s housing deficit while providing people and municipalities the necessary blueprint to enact real change.”
For Initialized partner (and former TechCrunch writer) Kim-Mai Cutler, who serves on the Abodu board of directors, the achievement of a 30-day construction milestone is almost a dream come true. Cutler wrote the book (or the equivalent of a book) on the housing crisis and its impact on the Bay Area and California broadly.
That piece led Cutler to work in public service “on boards and commissions overseeing the spending of federal dollars on homelessness and the proceeds of municipal bonds directed at financing affordable housing (because yes, for some segments of residents, you do have to explicitly subsidize housing at the local level),” as she noted in a blog post about her investment in Abodu.
The interior of an Abodu home. Photo via Abodu.
Cutler backed the company because of her deep knowledge of the issues associated with housing.
“The reason this is a big deal is because Northern California has been the most expensive and unpredictable place to build new housing in the world. Projects typically take several years because of uncertainty with entitlements and materials,” Cutler wrote. “Over the past year, Abodu co-founders John Geary and Eric McInerney have put homes in the backyards of parents bringing kids home from college, a mother-and-son pair that each bought one for their homes in Millbrae, a couple looking to eventually house a grandmother in San Jose and on and on.”
The key inspiration that Abodu’s founders hit on was their concentration on granny flats, casitas and backyard dwellings. “While deliberations over mid-rise density were stalling in Sacramento, the state legislature (and legislatures up north in the Pacific Northwest) were passing bill after bill, including Phil Ting’s AB 68 and Bob Wieckowski’s SB 1069, to make it really easy to add backyard units,” Cutler wrote. “This is the kind of change that suburban America wants, is comfortable with and can politically pass and implement easily.”
To Cutler’s thinking, Adobu’s 30-day construction schedule will change consumer behavior, thanks to the fact that the home can be craned in and installed in less than a day on a foundation constructed in less than two weeks. Its incredibly low cost will enable a lot of opportunities to develop new inventory and the simple fact is that inventory remains a scarce commodity. As Cutler noted, only half as many homes are trading across the United States as were available a year ago, which is happening at the same time as when millennials are entering prime family formation years.
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Drone-focused construction startup TraceAir raises $3.5M
Bay Area-based construction startup TraceAir today announced a $3.5 million Series A. Led by London-based XTX Ventures, this round brings the company’s total funding up to $7 million. The raise includes existing investor Metropolis VC, along with new additions Liquid 2 Ventures, GEM Capital, GPS Ventures and Andrew Filev.
We first noted the company back in 2016, when it pitched a method for using drones to spot construction errors before they become too expense. It’s a pretty massive field that various technology companies are attempting to solve through a variety of different means, ranging from quadrupedal robots to site-scanning hard hats.
Last February, TraceAir announced a new drone management tool. “Haul Router provides the best mathematically objective hauls for each given drone scan,” the company noted at the time. “Any employee can use the tool to design a haul road and export the results to feed into grading equipment.”
The pandemic has thrown the construction industry for a loop (along with countless others). But unlike other sectors, demand still remains high in many places. TraceAir is hoping its solution will prove beneficial as many outfits seek a way to continue the process in spite of uncertainty.
“The Covid-19 pandemic created new challenges for the U.S. and worldwide construction industries, resulting in delayed projects and growing unemployment rates,” CEO Dmitry Korolev said in a release tied to the news. “Our platform allows industry leaders to manage projects more efficiently and collaborate with their teams remotely, minimizing the need for a physical presence on-site.”
TraceAir says the additional funding will go toward its sales and marketing, along with future product developments, including an unnamed product set for release this quarter.
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WoHo wants to make constructing buildings fast, flexible and green with reusable ‘components’
Buildings are the bedrock of civilization — places to live, places to work (well, normally, in a non-COVID-19 world) and places to play. Yet how we conceive buildings, architect them for their uses and ultimately construct them on a site has changed remarkably little over the past few decades. Housing and building costs continue to rise, and there remains a slow linear process from conception to construction for most projects. Why can’t the whole process be more flexible and faster?
Well, a trio of engineers and architects out of MIT and Georgia Tech are exploring that exact question.
MIT’s former treasurer Israel Ruiz along with architects Anton Garcia-Abril of MIT and Debora Mesa of Georgia Tech have joined together on a startup called WoHo (short for “World Home”) that’s trying to rethink how to construct a modern building by creating more flexible “components” that can be connected together to create a structure.
WoHo’s Israel Ruiz, Debora Mesa and Anton Garcia-Abril. Photo by Tony Luong via WoHo.
By creating components that are usable in a wide variety of types of buildings and making them easy to construct in a factory, the goal of WoHo is to lower construction costs, maximize flexibility for architects and deliver compelling spaces for end users, all while making projects greener in a climate unfriendly world.
The team’s ideas caught the attention of Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner of The Engine, a special fund that spun out of MIT that is notable for its lengthy time horizons for VC investments. The fund is backing WoHo with $4.5 million in seed capital.
Ruiz spent the last decade overseeing MIT’s capital construction program, including the further buildout of Kendall Square, a neighborhood next to MIT that has become a major hub for biotech innovation. Through that process, he saw the challenges of construction, particularly for the kinds of unique spaces required for innovative companies. Over the years, he also built friendships with Garcia-Abril and Mesa, the duo behind Ensamble Studio, an architecture firm.
With WoHo, “it is the integration of the process from the design and concept in architecture all the way through the assembly and construction of that project,” Ruiz explained. “Our technology is suitable for low-to-high rise, but in particularly it provides the best outcomes for mid-to-high rise.”
So what exactly are these WoHo components? Think of them as well-designed and reusable blocks that can be plugged together in order to create a structure. These blocks are consistent and are designed to be easily manufactured and transported. One key innovation is around an improved reinforced cement that allows for better building quality at lower environmental cost.
Conception of a WoHo component under construction. Photo via WoHo
We have seen modular buildings before, typically apartment buildings where each apartment is a single block that can be plugged into a constructed structure (take for example this project in Sacramento). WoHo, though, wants to go further in having components that offer more flexibility and arrangements, and also act as the structure themselves. That gives architects far more flexibility.
It’s still early days, but the group has already gotten some traction in the market, inking a partnership with Swiss concrete and building materials company LafargeHolcim to bring their ideas to market. The company is building a demonstration project in Madrid, and targeting a second project in Boston for next year.
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Tesla ramps up solar tile roof installations in US, eyes China and Europe expansion
Tesla appears to be ramping up installations of its solar tile roofs in the San Francisco Bay area and will eventually roll out to Europe and China, according to CEO Elon Musk, who, in a series of tweets, provided the first substantial update since the company launched the third iteration of its product in October.
The solar tile roof, which Tesla calls Solarglass, is being produced at the company’s factory in Buffalo, N.Y. Musk announced in one of the tweets plans to host a “company talk” in April at the Buffalo factory, an event that will include media and customer tours of the facility.
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment seeking more information about Solarglass, including how many installations have been made to date. We will update the article if Tesla responds.
Many Bay Area installations are ongoing now
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2020
Europe & China timing will be announced soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2020
Four months ago, Musk said the company would begin installations in the “coming weeks” and that it hopes to ramp production to as many as 1,000 new roofs per week.
Tesla’s solar roof tiles are designed to look like normal roof tiles when installed on a house, while doubling as solar panels to generate power. The company first unveiled the solar tiles in 2016 and has been tinkering with them ever since. Tesla has conducted trial installations with the first two generations of the solar tiles and opened up pre-orders in 2017.
In an earnings call last October, Musk suggested that the tiles were ready for a widespread deployment, noting that “version three is finally ready for the big time.”
The solar tile roof will initially be offered in textured black, but Musk reiterated Monday plans to offer other color and finish variants “hopefully later this year.”
Yes, but we want to focus on textured black first, then move into Earth tones & convolutions
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2020
A pricing estimator on the Tesla website says a solar tile roof with 10 kW of solar on an average 2,000 square-foot home costs $42,500 before federal tax incentives. It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive.
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Levelset raises $30 million to improve money management for contractors in construction
Scott Wolfe, chief executive officer of Levelset, the New Orleans-based money management and payment startup for contractors in the construction industry, always thought he’d be in the grocery business.
His family owned a number of grocery stores around New Orleans and he was readying himself to go into the family business when Hurricane Katrina hit.
As the family business faced significant losses in their stores, the construction and contracting service they’d built to develop the land the stores were on had a tremendous opportunity. Within the span of a year, Wolfe had pivoted the family’s operations to focus on renovations and restorations and launched fully into construction.
It was during that time that Wolfe saw the need for some sort of software service that could manage cash flow and payment for the tens to hundreds of small business contractors involved in getting a project done.
So he built Levelset to be that service.
Now the company has closed on $30 million in financing from Horizons Ventures, the investment firm backed by Li Ka-shing, who is one of the world’s wealthiest billionaire property developers.
When Bart Swanson, an advisor to Horizons, met Levelset through a mutual friend who did some investing around the New Orleans-based Tulane University ecosystem, he immediately felt it was an opportunity that the Horizons investment committee would understand.
“This is a global issue,” says Swanson. “Sixty-four percent of construction businesses fail in their first five years because they have nowhere to turn for help,” when it comes to ensuring payment.
For now, Levelset is focused on digitizing billing and payments and providing insights into who is actually on a job site and the responsibilities that those workers have on site, according to Wolfe.
“There’s a ton of investment that has gone into the field,” says Wolfe. “What has seen a lack of as prolific an investment are things behind the scenes outside of the field that happen in the office. This is the accountants and administrative workers who have to take the information that’s in the field and turn it into money.”
For developers like Cheung Kong Holdings, Li’s development business, the promise of Levelset’s software is a huge boon. The construction industry runs on small businesses that lack software and services to process payments quickly. The time it takes to deal with paperwork can delay a project and ultimately cost developers money.
Horizons was joined in the new round by S3 Ventures, Operating Venture Capital, Altos Ventures and Darren Bechtel of Brick & Mortar Ventures. As a result of the investment, Swanson will take a seat on the company’s board.
In a recent survey of contractors by Levelset and T-Sheets by Quickbooks, more than half of contractors stated they were not paid on time and had significant cash flow challenges, and more than 75% craved more transparency in the payment process. This is no surprise, given PWC’s working capital studies in the past decade demonstrating that construction industry payment speeds are the slowest of all (83+ days).
“The effort required to get paid, and the cash stress put on contractors is unbelievable,” said Wolfe, in a statement. “The world’s biggest industry is full of small and medium businesses who are the fabric of our economy. It’s crucial that they can do their work without worrying about cash.”
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Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels, aims for install rate of 1K per week
Tesla has launched the third iteration of its solar roof tile for residential home use, which it officially detailed in a blog post on Friday and in a call with media. Tesla CEO Elon Musk kicked off the call with some explanatory remarks on the V3 Solar Roof, and then took a number of questions. The company says it’ll begin installations in the coming weeks (Musk says some installations have already begun) and that it hopes to ramp production to as many as 1,000 new roofs per week.
Tesla’s solar roof tiles — which are designed to look just like normal roof tiles when installed on a house, while doubling as solar panels to generate power — are something of a work-in-progress. The company is still tinkering with the product three years after announcing the concept, having done trial installations with two different iterations so far. “Versions one and two we were still figuring things out,” said Elon Musk on an earnings call earlier this week, adding that he thinks “version three is finally ready for the big time.”
Tesla’s Solar Roof website now includes a pricing estimator, which lists $42,500 as the total price for the average 2,000 square-foot home, with 10kW solar panels. It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive. You can also enter your address and get an updated estimate that takes into account local costs and incentives, and add on any Powerwalls (with three as the default for a 2,000 square-foot roof).
“The solarglass roof is not going to make financial sense for somebody who has a relatively new roof, because this is itself a roof, that has integrated solar power generation,” Musk explained. He went on to note that Tesla has managed with this version three product to achieve a price point that is “less than what the average roof costs, plus the solar panels” that you would add on top of said roof.
“Figuring out how to install it effectively is very non-trivial. And we’re actually going to have […] ‘installathons,’ ” Musk said, which will pit two teams against each other to see who can roof one of two similar-sized/designed roofs faster. Musk reiterated later that there’s “quite a bit of R&D just in the installation process itself.”
Musk also said that while it’s hiring and training specialized installers at first, the plan is to ultimately expand installations to any third-party contractors as well. On the call, he and the Tesla team discussed how they focused on getting the installation time down to where it’s faster than installing traditional shingles, plus solar panels on top of that. Musk added that his ultimate goal is to install the solar glass tiles even faster than comparative shingles. This is a significant change from version two of the solar roof, Musk later said.
“We’re doing installations as fast as we possibly can, starting in the next few weeks,” Musk said about availability, adding that the goal is to “get to 1,000 roofs per week” sometime in “the next several months.”
A report from CNBC from September 2018 found that Tesla still hadn’t performed many actual installations of its solar roof tile, despite the two-year gap between announcement and the date of their investigation, and a January announcement about the initiation of solar roof tile production at Tesla’s Buffalo-based Gigafactory. During the company’s annual general shareholder meeting in June, Musk said that the third iteration of the tile was being worked on, and while he didn’t detail the actual number of installations, he did say that they were in progress in eight different states across the U.S. at that point.
Musk addressed some of the production delays to date, addressing the installation complexity of previous generations, but also citing the Tesla Model 3 production ramp, which he said “really stripped resources from solar for a year or a year-and-a-half.” Now that Model 3 production is in a good place, Musk said that that has unblocked significantly some of the company’s ability to focus on this challenge.
The total addressable market that Musk sees for this product is somewhere on the order of 100 million houses worldwide, and Musk stressed that the company does indeed intend to make this available worldwide.
While at launch there will be only one available look for the Solar Roof, the Tesla CEO also said that the company will roll out additional variants as quickly as it can, including tiles that resemble clay and other alternatives.
The tiles and roof installation carry a warranty of 25 years, which includes their protective weatherization (including 130 MPH wind resistance) and their power generation capability. On balance, the Solar Roof provides more energy generation than a similarly sized roof retrofitted with traditional tiles, though individually, the tile’s power-gathering cells themselves are less energy-efficient than a traditional solar cell. The Solar Roof is better performing, however, because it covers more surface area of a home.
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