It seems like even a small solar panel on the roof of an electric car would make a lot of sense. When you’re sitting at work for 8 hours, your car can just soak up some sun. I’m assuming there is some sort of problem related to cost, rather than efficiency, but I can’t figure it out.
Edit: Thanks for the help. It makes a lot of sense now. I appreciate the in-depth answers too.
In: Engineering
Solar panels can provide about 150 Watts per square meter in ideal sunny conditions. Let’s say we put a 1 square meter panel on the roof of the car to generate 150 Watts.
Your 150 Watt solar panel sitting in the sun for 8 hours will generate 1200 watt hours.
An EV battery capacity is between 18 kilowatts hours on smaller EVs up to 100 kilowatt hours for the long range Tesla. A kilowatt is 1000 Watts. The 1.2 kilowatt hours from the panel can only charge 6.7% of the smaller 18 kilowatt hour battery or 1.2% of the larger 100 kilowatt hour battery. This is a very small percentage for the costs of adding the panels.
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