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What are the obstacles to designing a new EV with a solar panel on the roof or hood?

• layoric 8y ago
  Watts per square meter of solar radiation is ~1kW before taking into account solar panel efficiency (usually ~20% these days) so it just doesn’t generate that much power on the roof of a car to be useful.
• modeless 8y ago
  The major obstacle is that the sunlight falling on the entire surface of a car does not contain enough power to run the car for a typical amount of driving (even unrealistically assuming no shade, no clouds, world record solar efficiency, etc). So it doesn't solve the problem of needing charging stations.
• gambiting 8y ago
  The fact that on the equator, at noon, you get 1kW of power for every square meter of surface. It's much much less elsewhere in the world. Then the best solar panels are about 40% efficient. Then the surfaces that could actually be covered by solar panels on a car are not that large, and you begin to realize that you could never recharge any meaningful amount with solar panels - we're talking couple miles of range for a day of charging.
• marvin 8y ago
  Just saw this prototype in the newspaper today. It is covered with solar cells, and apparently, it recharges 18 miles of range if you leave it out in the sun all day. https://www.dn.no/nyheter/2018/08/09/0926/Motor/testkjorer-soldrevet-bil-som-kan-lade-mens-den-kjorer https://www.dn.no/nyheter/2018/08/09/0926/Motor/testkjorer-s...