Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
The conditions were not optimal, and the use case for solar panels on a car is not the long trips beyond battery range kind.
The point of having panels is that they keep charging when the car is parked.
During the test the panels added about 25 miles of range in 9 hours on a mostly overcast day. So it would easily add 200 miles in a week, or 10,000 in a year.
If your commute is not way beyond say 40 miles a day, you'd only have to charge it in winter, during especially bad spells of weather or when you do extra driving.
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The cool thing about solar panels is they are light weight. I don't know about Lightyear One, but Aptera says their solar panels only add about 6 lbs to the car. A "measily" 3.4 kWh more of battery could potentially weigh some 85lbs more and take you over 2 and a half hours to charge from a conventional outlet. And on days that there's full sun, those 6lbs could get you double that, saving you from over an hour at a 6kWh station.