By Martin Rosenberg | EnergyBiz
Honda has teamed up with SolarCity to offer customers home solar units with little or no upfront charge.
To better understand Honda’s gambit, I interviewed Ryan Harty, American Honda assistant vice president for environmental business development, and Steve Center, vice president of environmental business development.
EnergyBiz: Honda teamed up with SolarCity to give it funding to lease people’s rooftops, and Honda will own the solar?
Center: Right. The solar system’s a little too much for the average consumer’s credit card, and these days home equity lines are tough to obtain. Meanwhile, home solar energy is kind of a baby industry. The financing for it hasn’t matured as it has for autos and houses where huge markets exist for their financing. So we created a little financing company to pay for these systems. This way, Honda family members, including our dealers, could acquire a system, and the fund will pay for it. Consumers can either lease a solar system for 20 years or pay for the electricity every month We studied SolarCity very carefully. We like the company for various reasons. It has a broad geographic footprint. The company does its own installations, so Honda Power & Light need not deal with a thousand contractors around the country. That makes a difference because customer experience is important to us. Regarding customer experience, we have a lot in common with SolarCity.
Also: What an Efficiency Startup Is Learning From Third-Party Solar Financing
