Tesla’s 100 GW Solar Bet vs. America’s 3.2 GW Reality: Why Musk’s Biggest Promise Yet Should Worry Investors

The same week Tesla posted its second consecutive year of declining vehicle deliveries, the company started hiring engineers to build something it has never successfully built at scale: solar cells. A job posting on Tesla’s website for a solar manufacturing development engineer states the company’s goal is to “deploy 100GW of solar manufacturing from raw materials on American soil before the end of 2028.” That target is roughly 30 times the entire current U.S. solar cell manufacturing capacity.

Here’s what you need to know:

• The fact: Tesla executives are publicly recruiting on LinkedIn for Musk’s plan to become America’s largest solar manufacturer, with a 2028 deadline.
• The gap: The U.S. currently has 65 GW of solar module capacity but only 3.2 GW of solar cell capacity. Musk wants 100 GW of fully integrated production. China controls over 80% of the global solar supply chain.
• The irony: Tesla is scouting Chinese solar companies for technology at the same time the Trump administration, where Musk recently served, is slashing clean energy subsidies.

Tesla’s Solar Hiring Spree Puts a Deadline on Musk’s Davos Promise

Tesla is actively recruiting to support CEO Elon Musk‘s January announcement at the World Economic Forum in Davos that Tesla and SpaceX would achieve 100 GW of annual solar manufacturing capacity within three years. According to Reuters, senior Tesla executives including Director of Engineering Ralf Gomm and VP of Battery Cell Manufacturing Bonne Eggleston posted about the solar hiring push on LinkedIn this week.

“This is an audacious, ambitious project,” wrote Seth Winger, Tesla senior manager for solar products engineering, in one of several posts. “We need audacious, ambitious engineers and scientists to help us grow to massive scale.”

Bloomberg reported today that Tesla isn’t just talking. The company is evaluating multiple U.S. sites for solar cell manufacturing, including expanding its Buffalo, New York factory to as much as 10 GW of capacity. Arizona and Idaho are also under consideration. That 10 GW Buffalo target alone would triple America’s current solar cell output.

The timing is notable. Tesla is pivoting toward solar manufacturing at a moment when its EV sales are going backward. Full-year 2025 deliveries fell 8.6% to 1.64 million vehicles while the global EV market grew 28%. BYD overtook Tesla as the world’s top battery-electric seller for the first time.

The Math Doesn’t Work Without Chinese Help

America’s solar manufacturing gap is the elephant in the room. The U.S. has over 60 GW of solar module assembly capacity, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. But modules are the easy part. Solar cell manufacturing, where the actual technology conversion happens, sits at just 3.2 GW domestically. Upstream production of polysilicon, ingots, and wafers is even thinner. China dominates more than 80% of the entire solar supply chain from raw silicon to finished panels.

Musk apparently knows this. Days after his Davos announcement, delegations from Tesla and SpaceX visited multiple Chinese photovoltaic companies, including JinkoSolar, GCL Group, TCL Zhonghuan, and Jingsheng Electromechanical. The teams focused on heterojunction (HJT) and perovskite cell technologies, reviewing equipment, silicon wafers, and module production lines. Chinese state media reported the visits sent Chinese solar stocks surging, with JinkoSolar hitting its 20% daily trading limit in Shanghai.

GCL said Musk’s team was briefed on its granular silicon technology and its perovskite operations in the United States. The interest in perovskite is telling. Unlike traditional rigid silicon cells, perovskite can be printed on flexible substrates, potentially enabling vehicle-integrated solar on curved surfaces like the Cybercab’s roof.

The political optics are awkward. Musk spent the first months of 2025 leading the Department of Government Efficiency, advocating for cuts to federal spending. The Trump administration subsequently passed legislation eliminating clean energy tax credits that Tesla’s own energy division publicly criticized. Now Musk is touring Chinese factories to source technology for a massive U.S. solar buildout that just lost its federal incentive structure.

Tesla’s Solar Track Record Gives Analysts Reason to Doubt

Tesla has been here before. The company acquired SolarCity in 2016, inheriting a nearly $1 billion taxpayer-funded factory in Buffalo that New York State built specifically for solar manufacturing. Musk predicted at the time that Buffalo would produce 1,000 Solar Roofs per week. It never came close.

Panasonic partnered with Tesla to make solar cells there, then left the project in 2020. The factory shifted to producing Supercharger components and housing Autopilot data labeling teams. A state comptroller’s audit found the facility generated just 54 cents of economic benefit for every subsidy dollar spent. The Empire Center for Public Policy called it “the single biggest economic development boondoggle in American history.”

Tesla recently restarted solar panel assembly in Buffalo, launching a new residential panel with deliveries beginning in Q1 2026. Colby Hastings, senior director of Tesla Energy, told multiple outlets the goal is to scale the Buffalo factory to 300 MW of panel assembly capacity this year. That’s 300 MW. Musk is promising 100,000 MW (100 GW). The gap between current reality and the stated target is staggering.

“While Musk’s long-term forecasts are often directionally accurate, near-term timelines have been missed frequently, especially for projects involving new manufacturing ecosystems,” TD Cowen analyst Jeff Osborne wrote in a client note. “We consider these targets aspirational rather than likely for the U.S. solar supply chain in the midterm.”

Reuters highlighted Musk’s broader credibility gap. He has promised every year since 2016 that driverless Teslas would arrive no later than the following year. Last July he predicted Tesla robotaxis would serve “half the population of the U.S.” by the end of 2025. Tesla currently operates a limited robotaxi service in one city, Austin, and only recently removed human safety monitors from some vehicles.

Tesla’s Energy Pivot Is Real, Even If the Timeline Isn’t

The strategic logic behind Tesla’s solar push is sound, even if the execution timeline strains credibility. Tesla’s energy division has quietly become the company’s most profitable business segment. Energy storage achieved gross margins of 30% in recent quarters, nearly double the 17% margins in automotive. Revenue from the storage segment, which includes solar, grew 67% in 2024 to $4 billion, partially offsetting a $6 billion decline in EV sales.

Tesla is already building its third Megapack factory near Houston and has proven it can execute large-scale energy projects. The 164-stall solar-powered Supercharger in Lost Hills, California, which we covered in November, demonstrated that Tesla can integrate solar, battery storage, and charging infrastructure at scale. That station runs on 11 MW of solar panels and 39 MWh of Megapack storage with just 1.5 MW of grid backup.

Musk himself has argued that solar and batteries are the best way to add electricity to the power grid at a time when data centers linked to artificial intelligence are driving soaring energy demand. That argument carries weight. AI infrastructure requires continuous, reliable power at scales that existing grid capacity can’t easily accommodate.

Empire State Development, New York’s economic development agency, told Reuters it has “not yet engaged with Tesla” about the expansion, suggesting any Buffalo buildout is still in early planning stages.

EVXL’s Take

I’ve covered Tesla’s solar ambitions since the SolarCity acquisition, and the pattern is always the same: enormous promises followed by quiet retreats. Musk predicted 1,000 Solar Roofs per week from Buffalo. He got Supercharger parts and data labeling instead. Now he’s promising 100 GW of integrated solar manufacturing by 2028 from a base of effectively zero cell production.

The Chinese factory visits tell the real story. Tesla can’t build 100 GW of anything without Chinese technology, equipment, or both. China spent two decades and hundreds of billions building its solar supply chain dominance. The idea that Tesla will replicate even a fraction of that in under three years, while simultaneously navigating a hostile federal policy environment that just killed solar tax credits, is unrealistic.

But here’s what’s actually happening beneath the headline: Tesla is positioning its energy division as the company’s future growth engine because the car business is stalling. Two consecutive years of declining deliveries. Europe down 39%. BYD overtaking them globally. The post-tax credit collapse we documented gutted Q4 2025 EV sales by 36%.

So Musk does what he always does: announce something massive to redirect attention. The 100 GW number isn’t a manufacturing plan. It’s a narrative device. The actual near-term outcome will be far more modest. Tesla might get Buffalo to 1-2 GW of panel assembly. It might secure some Chinese cell technology through partnerships. It might expand into Arizona or Idaho with a pilot facility.

My prediction: by the end of 2028, Tesla will have less than 5 GW of domestic solar manufacturing capacity. That’s still meaningful in a market with only 3.2 GW of cell production today. But it’s not 100 GW. It won’t be close. And by then, Musk will have moved on to the next audacious promise.

For Tesla investors, the energy story is real. Battery makers are pivoting to energy storage for good reason, and Tesla has a genuine head start in that market. But don’t confuse energy storage success with solar manufacturing capability. They’re completely different supply chains, and one of them is dominated by a country that Musk’s former boss in Washington is actively trying to decouple from.

Photo credits: Tesla

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.