Solar Shingle

I started paying attention to Elon Musk because of his stupid hyperloop and fake and dangerous self-driving cars that will be here any day now, 6 weeks, a year, tops, but basically he's generally a huckster. His "solar shingles" looked neat when he unveiled them but, as he often does, he promised a technology before it existed. Though in this case it wasn't simply a prototype that wasn't quite ready for mass production. It was nothing. A fake.

In October 2016, Musk whipped up solar-product excitement by unveiling a “solar roof” on the old set of ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.” The roof integrated solar cells with shingles, which were to be sold through Tesla stores and available for commercial deployment.

The shingle Musk held turned out to be fake, but that was not widely known when Tesla shareholders voted to acquire SolarCity in November, 2016.