Yes, by a small amount, unless you live in the arctic circle or something.
But does that mean they’re worth it? Probably not. There’s the financial cost as well as the weight. Plus potentially eating into head room. Plus it’s another thing to potentially go wrong.
I certainly see the use case for campervans - a large flat roof is ideal, and being able to park for a couple of days and charge a leisure battery without flattening your main battery or running an engine seems perfect.
But for a passenger car, the use seems more limited.
Maybe with some of the super cheap perovskite cells coming out? Maybe.
It’s a very marginal idea, at best. Even in equatorial regions under perfect weather, there just isn’t that much solar power you can collect with the space of a car roof.
Aptera is attempting to do this. They had to engineer their own solar panels for the car. Probably the closest thing they have to production ready. They also had to make the car super efficient to make it work. Peak output of their design is about 700W
If you figure 10 hours of that (or longer but with less-perfect conditions) you can get 7kWh. I estimate about 3.5 miles per kWH on my Bolt. Not sure this car’s efficiency, but it gives us a ballpark number. That would give about 25 miles of driving. I understand that there are plenty of other factors that can go into this, but “fewer than 10 miles in perfect conditions” isn’t necessarily accurate either.
Are the solar panels even efficient enough at those angles to the sun to generate more electricity than they cost in weight?
Yes, by a small amount, unless you live in the arctic circle or something.
But does that mean they’re worth it? Probably not. There’s the financial cost as well as the weight. Plus potentially eating into head room. Plus it’s another thing to potentially go wrong.
I certainly see the use case for campervans - a large flat roof is ideal, and being able to park for a couple of days and charge a leisure battery without flattening your main battery or running an engine seems perfect.
But for a passenger car, the use seems more limited.
Maybe with some of the super cheap perovskite cells coming out? Maybe.
It’s a very marginal idea, at best. Even in equatorial regions under perfect weather, there just isn’t that much solar power you can collect with the space of a car roof.
Aptera is attempting to do this. They had to engineer their own solar panels for the car. Probably the closest thing they have to production ready. They also had to make the car super efficient to make it work. Peak output of their design is about 700W
So, fewer than 10 miles per day in perfect conditions?
700 watts = .7 kW
If you figure 10 hours of that (or longer but with less-perfect conditions) you can get 7kWh. I estimate about 3.5 miles per kWH on my Bolt. Not sure this car’s efficiency, but it gives us a ballpark number. That would give about 25 miles of driving. I understand that there are plenty of other factors that can go into this, but “fewer than 10 miles in perfect conditions” isn’t necessarily accurate either.
That’s the other part, they’ve made the car as efficient as possible. They’re estimating 40 miles/perfect day because of that.
Geeze, a <$1000 e-bike conversion kit can put out more than that.