this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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How did you come up with that? Are you accounting for lost generation due to pointing straight up at the sky, and reduced efficiency due to increased aerodynamic drag?
There's a good reason we don't put solar on vehicles, its expensive and there's not really enough space to make much of any difference.
Looking at that roof, it looks like it's about 3m x 1.5m, for 4.5 m^2. Typical solar panel gets about 200W/m^2 at max sunlight.
So that's a peak generation of 900W. With a 24 hour day and a capacity factor of 10%, that's about 2.16 kWh of energy per day. For a van like that, with the weight and aerodynamics of a bulky solar system on the roof and the systems for storing that energy in another battery and cleanly providing that power in a way that the car charging system can accept? I'd be skeptical that's good for more than 8km per day, on a sunny day.
That peak though. Which you'll realistically never reach, much less for 24 hours...
Yeah, that's why I used a capacity factor of 10%, which is pretty normal for fixed solar panels. That should be enough to account for clouds/weather, nighttime, etc.