Oooh! I know! I know! [waives hand furiously 'til recognized
]
Because there's clearly not much solar reception surface at all and it takes a lot of watts to actually move a BEV anywhere!
So, sure, if you park the thing out in the sun for a week to drive to the grocery five miles away, you're good to go in the realm of really low expectations...
Cheers!
Ding ding ding! And I'll add to that. It takes a lot less energy to propel a dinky little two-seater that looks like it wouldn't withstand an impact with a shopping cart 40 miles than an actual daily-driver BEV.
This is a proof of concept vehicle that throws "being an actual practical vehicle" out the window and the best case is 40 miles of range in a day.
They're indicating 40 miles gained on a sunny day with the vehicle parked out in the sun.
Even if they're talking about southern California, I'd still take 20 miles of gain on a summer day.
The big thing I need to see from this company is to actually get vehicles to the people who ordered them. Not that I'm planning on getting one, they're goofy looking two-seaters.
Why does the solar part of it make you skeptical?
I'm not skeptical about the concept. The basic concept makes sense. Cars are often in the sun, solar power is free, might as well add solar panels to the main horizontal surfaces of the vehicle (roof, front hood, rear deck lid).
And economically, you can make it pencil out. All you really need to do is provide more charging over the span of a 5-7 year life of the car (or more depending on how long you think you need to amortize) to justify the cost of the solar panels and some additional charging circuitry to add an additional source of power.
Environmentally, it also makes sense. Every watt of power you get from the sun is a watt of power that you don't have to get from coal or NG or even nuclear, and reduces the overall load on the electric grid for others.
However, there isn't enough surface area, and actual practical BEVs are so much heavier than something like the Aptera, that solar panels on the car actually make a meaningless difference to overall range of the vehicle. A full day of sun may in a perfect world get you 40 miles of range on the Aptera, but with much bigger electric motors, much heavier vehicles, and less perfect aerodynamics, would that perfect day of sun get you more than 10 miles of range in a Tesla? I doubt it.
It's like you telling me that you want to lose weight, and I say "well if you cut down on the beer, that'll help". And you say, "okay, I'm going to skip two beers a month." Will it help? Sure, that's 400 fewer calories, multiplied by 12 per year, you've reduced your intake by 4800 calories. And since the rule of thumb is that 3500 calories is a pound, you'll be dropping 1.5 lbs per year. That's a great thing! Of course, if you're 30 pounds overweight, a 20 year plan for weight loss isn't exactly meaningful.
That's where the tech is at right now. Yes, putting solar panels on an electric car is IMHO a net good, and I applaud the concept. I *think* it even pencils out economically. However, the effect with current tech is not large enough to really be noticeable. It won't likely mean that you'll get enough charge that you almost never need to plug in. It won't likely reduce your overall charging bill by a very measurable amount. It won't extend your range enough to make a big difference--you're getting 4-5 miles more a day,
maybe.
People talking about solar panels on cars usually sell it as making a meaningful difference. I'm saying solar panels are a marginal improvement overall, but we need an order of magnitude more efficiency to get to meaningful.