Eli5: Amid of soaring gasoline and electricity prices, why aren’t we seeing solar powered cars making to the mainstream?
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There’s an issue of weight and aerodynamic shapes not playing well with the cheap flat solar panels currently available.
Solar charging is just reaching the “exotic” car market, because optimizing for weight, aerodynamics and efficiency is expensive, especially without high volume production. The thin lightweight solar cells they use are also quite expensive per watt compared to rooftop solar.
Lightyear zero was just announced – carbon fiber body, solar panels that produce “up to” ~40 miles per day with good sunlight. (Much less if it’s cloudy). Cool $260k list price. Weighs half what a Tesla does and uses relatively low power motors (probably closer to the wheel motors used on some electric mopeds). 4 motors, 0-60 in a stately 10 seconds (about on par with a modern econobox sedan/hatchback)
If they are using the type of thin flexible solar cells I think they are, the 5m^2 of cells is probably on the order of $80k just in solar cells alone.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnn.com/travel/amp/lightyear-0-solar-assisted-car-spc-c2e-intl/index.html
Technology might some day become more affordable. There are a couple other cars out there that are slightly cheaper and make different compromises to get at least some at least minimal (3 to 45 miles per day) solar charging range (Aptera Sol, Mercedes EQXX, Sono Sion, and options on Hyundai Ioniq and Fisker Ocean)
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