[Diederich]

Right! Disclaimer: I'm a bit of an Elon Musk fanboy.

I think this is really the key thing. Many of the big leaps forward are about challenging deeply rooted or held assumptions. Elon Musk seems to be very good at that.

I don't have the details, but in his presentation of the Tesla solar roof tiles, he mentioned, a couple of times, how inefficient the whole supply chain was for roofing today. His body language implied that it was shockingly inefficient.

So when he made the claim that solar roof tiles will be about the same price as old school roof tiles, maybe that's why. Challenging a bunch of assumptions, and even looking in places that few others thought to look.

PS: I know this is a simplifications, and I'm sure others have looked into this space before, so I'm not sure what caused others not to push forward.