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Originally Posted by All Darc
Supose you already have the drag for both. Drag, weight, power of electric motors, all for both.
A solar panel do not need to have the same power output as the power of the electric motor. With batteries you can store some energy everytime you park on sun or reduce speed a lot. On road in cruiser mode you only use a fraction of the power of electric motor, if have good aerdynamics and the road have no climb.
Solarworld No1, Morelli based, similar to Aptera, have a 1800W solar array, using 29% efficient solar cells.
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Yes, it's very neat as an engineering feat, but not practical or applicable to consumer vehicles. 1800W is only 2.4 horsepower, which might drive that car at 55 MPH under ideal conditions. Even if the car were left in the sun to charge, 1.8 kWh is a very low rate.
Vehicles are among the worst place for solar panels. Much better to put them on a roof and angle them to be efficient.