That shutdown caused Tesla to slash its workforce in Buffalo from 1,834 workers in early March to 474 by the end of April a figure that included an undisclosed number of employees who were on furlough.

At the same time, Tesla's partner in the Buffalo factory, Panasonic, is moving ahead with its plans to stop manufacturing solar panels at the South Park Avenue facility, throwing more than 375 of the Japanese company's workers out of a job. Panasonic is scheduled to auction off much of the equipment it used in its portion of the Buffalo factory next week.

The downturn in Tesla's solar energy business comes after the company's executives had expressed hope last year that it was poised to reverse its years-long decline and start growing again.

Before the Covid-19 outbreak, Tesla had predicted that its solar energy deployments would rise by 50% this year, breaking a steep and prolonged decline since the electric vehicle maker acquired the business from SolarCity in November 2016.

Since then, Tesla has cut prices on its conventional rooftop solar to $1.49 per watt, which the company said is about a third less than the industry average. The price cut reduced the payback period to six years on a large rooftop system in California, which requires rooftop solar on all new construction. A 4-kilowatt rooftop solar system now costs a little more than $6,000 after federal incentives.

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Tesla's solar energy business takes a beating during the pandemic - Buffalo News