Eli5: Amid of soaring gasoline and electricity prices, why aren’t we seeing solar powered cars making to the mainstream?
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A solar panel on the roof of a Tesla would only produce a few watt-hours of electricity. A square meter of Earth can get perhaps 164 watts of solar radiation, only a fraction of this can be converted to electricity by a solar panel. Even if the reception and conversion of solar energy were 100% efficient, the solar panel would only collect 164 watt-hours of electricity each hour. Put another way, it would only produce 0.164 kWh (kilowatt-hours) per hour. This also assumes optimum conditions—a lower latitude, no clouds.
The battery pack in a Tesla ranges from about 50 kWh (220 miles of range) to 82 kWh (353 miles of range).
Assuming, again, the process was 100% efficient, it would take a square meter of solar panel on the roof of a Tesla 305 to 500 hours of charging to recharge the batteries.
And that is why we don’t have solar-powered cars.
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