Why aren’t electric vehicles using solar panels integrated into the panoramic rooftops? Wouldn’t this eliminate the need for charging stations – to be able to collect a solar charge at most hours of the day and *during* the actual act of driving?

Question

Why aren’t electric vehicles using solar panels integrated into the panoramic rooftops? Wouldn’t this eliminate the need for charging stations – to be able to collect a solar charge at most hours of the day and *during* the actual act of driving?

In: 1963

Answer 1

Electric cars use a lot of energy compared to how much you can get out of solar panels:

A solar panel can only put out about 20 Watts of power per square foot, and that’s only in direct sunlight.

The current Tesla Model 3 has a 62,000 Watt-hour battery.

Let’s assume you could fit 65 square feet of solar panels onto the hood, roof and trunk of a Tesla Model 3.

62000 Wh ÷ (20 W/sq.ft × 65 sq.ft) ≈ 48 h

So it would take 48 hours to fully charge the car’s battery.

That doesn’t sound ***too*** bad, right? Just two days? ***Nope.*** 48 hours ***of peak sunlight.*** Most of the US only gets about 4 hours of peak sunlight per day, so it would take more than a week. Probably more like 2 weeks when you account for bad weather.