Musk is building cars for a mainly american style market - long drives and private parking.

topping up 5 miles a day means that a full battery will last me and the 1.8 million UK cars that do under 2000 miles a year, months between having to plug in and recharge.

I'm in the US but have a 2 mile commute each way, and I don't drive to work every day (pre-covid). Uncommon but I'm not alone.

- For me, 5 miles a day would keep the battery topped off and I wouldn't have to visit a charger except on longer trips.

- Would also be much more palatable to limit the full-charge voltage to something a little lower, prolonging the battery's useful life, knowing it'll passively recharge daily.

- Would also enable more connected vehicle features.

- Given a choice between a car that slowly loses a bit of charge daily, or one that gains charge, everyone would pick one that gains.

- Would also lessen the fear of running out of charge a mile away from a charger and needing a tow truck, just wait a few hours if it's sunny, or at least charge enough to park somewhere safe and phone a friend to pick you up and leave it for a day.

- Could go on camping trips a bit further away and let it charge for a week, or use the AC/heater occasionally.

- If the car is covered in snow it can warm up the panels and melt some snow. Teslas can already do this but it's even more practical with PV on the roof.

As long as people understand this doesn't mean they can drive nonstop in the sun or that they'll get any significant short-term range boost, it's still extremely sensible.

> Given a choice between a car that slowly loses a bit of charge daily, or one that gains charge, everyone would pick one that gains.

I suspect most people would choose the one which is $2000 less and looks nicer.

> Could go on camping trips a bit further away and let it charge for a week, or use the AC/heater occasionally.

Totally agree here, but I’m not buying a car based on what I do a half dozen weekends a year either. More important is to ensure you have bigger battery capacity. Buying the Model Y Long range, I paid $8k 80 miles more range. That’s going to be far more useful than the 5 miles per day you might get out of this.

This is all around something I might pay for as an upgrade, but certainly not an important part of the purchase decision.

Those are all very real and legit advantages, but they are also very tiny, and for a very small subset of usecases of the car - where it is parked for most of a month, and only used for a couple of days here and there, and only for short trips, in a very sunny country, that also has bad infrastructure in terms of garages and charging (otherwise you just plug it in and forget about it), and yet where you actually have a space in the sun to park it.

Yes, those are all useful things but you have to (as a manufacturer, at least) weigh them against all the costs of building this feature, making production more complex, deal with the returns/breakages, etc. etc. So like the parent comment said, the consensus seems to be "just not worth it".

idk but from ppl i know the vast majority of car usage is for short trips like shopping/childcare/deliveries.

even a small ammount of self charging would go a very long way to make the car more pleasent to use.

Using a car for a 2 mile "commute" sounds very US. That's a 10 minute bike ride tops.

> Using a car for a 2 mile "commute" sounds very US.

Definitely.

> That's a 10 minute bike ride tops.

Perhaps, though it may not be possible cover that 2 mile commute by bike and survive.

At one point I was staying in a hotel along a small highway in Texas and saw a strip mall with restaurants on the other side. After about twenty minutes trying to find a way across I gave up and got in my car to cross the road.

Transit policy in many US cities and towns is somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile to anyone who is not driving a car.

The catch-22 of solar roofed cars is the time of year when they are likely to be most useful—during the summer—the last thing you want to do is park your car in the sun to charge. Whatever benefit you gain from solar charging, you lose as soon as you have to fire up the AC for 10 minutes to make it livable.

In general, it’s a good idea to park your car under cover for a lot of reasons. Fabrics don’t do well when exposed to the high heat you get parking in the sun for prolonged periods. If you live or work in a city, chances are high that you are parking in a covered garage or basement.

Solar roofs on cars are a neat idea, but not likely near as useful for most people as spending the money on more batteries for longer range.

I would actually like a solar roof for just this reason: when I have no choice but to park in the sun, it would be convenient if it could produce enough energy to maintain a reasonable temperature without impacting the remaining range.

Can already do this on the Tesla. It’s not solar, but cracking the windows and running the fans to keep it vented isn’t going to burn more than a mile or two of range.

The best way to spend money improving an EV is almost always going to be on batteries or weight reduction. Self charging is neat, but unless you get much more efficient solar arrays, it’s always going to be limited to niche applications. Five miles more range is always going to be useful, solar arrays which add a mile or two of range under specific conditions are far less interesting.

I agree that in many cases an extra dollar of battery capacity provides more utility than an extra dollar of solar charging.

But I did have one of those niche applications a while ago: I used to travel for work and often left my car parked random airport lots for months at a time which meant I occasionally came back to melted cassette tapes and a dead battery. In that case $100 of solar panels to run an exhaust fan and/or trickle charge the battery seems like it would have provided more utility to me than $100 of additional battery capacity.

I wouldn't be willing to add thousands of dollars worth of solar panels like the Sion and even if I did I wouldn't consider it a replacement for charging via the electric grid. But if my next car comes with an optional/after-market "solar package" that can integrate solar panels into the roof that seems like it would provide some value to me, at least more than the fancy wheel or audio packages they currently offer.

This brings back memories of slowly dying car alarms back in the 90s.

I probably come across as being more anti-solar roof than I am. Mostly just feel like this isn’t a feature I’d make a purchase decision on and wouldn’t likely pay too much for.

I was reading on the Tesla forums about just bringing a portable solar array for camping and it’s weirdly a lot more complicated than you’d think. Perhaps having it integrated would make it simpler, but it’s a lot trickier than just topping off a 12v battery with a solar array.

Interesting, I hadn't know that about Teslas. On a Prius you can mount a ~$50 12V solar trickle charger on your dashboard, possibly with some rewiring [1] to keep one of your 12v sockets live, and it's even easier on older trucks. I'd imagine that the smarter the car, the harder it is to make those kinds of modifications. Even so, an optional "solar package" that integrates cleanly with the dashboard (or roof) seems like it might have broad appeal.

And if your only goal is to use it as an excuse to talk to your friends about having solar panels in your car then a small panel makes even more sense -- you can talk almost as much about a small panel as a large one for a fraction of the cost.

[1] e.g. https://www.coastaletech.com/power_outlet_mod.htm

That's a good point. There are cars for the European market, and I don't think we'll be seeing many in the states.

My main point though, is that the amount of electricity you can collect from the surface area of a car is very negligible. It's a very ambitious goal indeed. It's not worthless, it's basically free energy so anything gained is good I guess. It just seems there are a lot of people here that seem to think this is going to be better than it actually is. It's easy to get hyped up by the marketing, but my suspicion is it is much worse that we would wish.

I'm very skeptical of the numbers they have posted. Especially in England where hours of sunlight per year is below average. A quick search suggests England on average get roughly 1500 hours of sunshine per year. Comparatively, my state of South Carolina get upwards of 2800 hours. You should be looking at the 'cloudy' bars on the chart (https://sonomotors.com/en/solar-integration/). Assuming the charts are right, that's 77 Km per week at peak summer, and as low as 21 KM per week in the winter, realistically. If the weather of favorable, and you don't park in shade, then sure you could get better results.

We have basically reached the limit of what we can extract from solar cells, and there is not enough surface area on a small car to make 'the dream' come true, of having the car charge itself without plugging in.

It looks great on the marketing campaigns though. And I'll give this company credit, their body panel system does look very innovative. It seems they have made some important enhancements in this type of solar tech. And all things considered, the more electric cars on the road the better, I hope they sell a ton of them!

I really can't understand your POV. Of course it doesn't mean never having to visit a charger for cross-country trips, which is obviously a dream. It does mean the car adds charge passively rather than losing it, the panels are silly cheap compared to the cost of batteries, and the hardest part would just be integrating them into the body panels, which is certainly achievable. See my other comment in this thread where I can easily think of 5-6 significant benefits. There's really no reason not to do it, if we don't mislead people into thinking it means infinite range in the sun. The only other criticism I can think of is that people won't like how it looks, but that's their loss.

And in fact, for my short commute and I'm sure at least a few others, it would mean never having to visit a charger except for long trips.

It adds cost and complexity to the cars, so that's one reason not to do it.

Still - I have an EV that's sitting idle most of the time because of the pandemic. I had to plug it in a handful of times this year, that would mean plugging it in zero times.

Also, if it is very sunny, it means the car is hot. One common thing to do is to start climate control before getting into the car so it will be at a comfortable temperature. We would get this heat rejection for free?

Is it worth it? Not sure. Maybe. Everything else being the same (including price) I would pick a car equipped like this versus another car without this feature.

By the way, some Nissan Leaf trims had a small solar panel to charge the 12v battery. That was useful. Mine has to periodically connect the traction battery to do the same.

One bad thing about leaving your car outside all the time vs a garage although is increased wear on the body and the overall life of the car.

Again American market. parking your car indoors is weird in the UK. Parking on the street with no ability to plug in overnight is far more common.

"In England in 2018 – the last date for which figures are available – 9 per cent of household vehicles were parked in a garage overnight; 63 per cent were parked on private property (but not garaged); 25 per cent were parked on the street; and 2 per cent were parked in other places."

I hear you. It’s not nothing, maybe I’m ranting too much. It’s cool tech & this company looks to be at the forefront of it. I have an eyebrow raised. I hope they sell a bunch of these cars!

My main POV that I rambled around I guess, is I’m trying to temper expectations. Browsing through this thread, I’m just seeing too many folks who are expecting way too much out of this technology. I’m almost certain it will not deliver on the high hopes most people have for it. Even if that hope is you don’t have to charge on your very short commute.

It’s easy to get hyped up reading the marketing material on this company’s website. The idea seems great to the lay person. But the fact of the matter is when I hear Elon Musk say publicly that he and his team looked into it, & they determined it’s not an idea worth pursuing, I believe him.

Engineers & physicists way smarter than you and me have done the calculations. There is only so much energy you can get out tiny solar panels on a car body. Period. We’re talking about the laws of physics here. Conceptually it sounds amazing, in reality the result is lackluster.

Everyone wants to look at it with ‘best case scenario’ mentality, but day to day it’s just not going to be that effective. Again, not saying it’s nothing. There are some benefits.

But the added complexity of manufacturing? Could it be scaled larger than the 13K preorders they have? What happens when the panels start failing and need to be repaired? What happens when you get in a fender bender and half your ’solar grid’ goes offline, will you be willing or able to pay a specialist to repair the intricate solar grid in your car body?

It’s just a lot of effort and resources that could be focused elsewhere. Everyone is so excited because the concept sounds amazing, but the downsides & complexity are real. I seriously doubt this will power your car even for small commutes.

To be fair, I said nothing about long trips. You, and many others are suggesting/ hoping this tech will power the car for very short commutes. My point is I don’t believe even very short trips, on average, will be powered by these solar panels. Sure, a fraction of your short commute will be powered, if it is fully sunny & you don’t park in the shade. But there are too many folks here believing that their 10 mile daily commute will be fully covered, and I’m arguing it won’t. Doesn’t mean the tech is worthless though :)

> There's really no reason not to do it

Cost is the reason. You have to consider cost.

If your commute is less than 5 miles a day, you should probably be riding a bike or an ebike. Pushing around a big car to travel what is essentially walking distance is a waste (and expensive). Even 10 miles a day is easy ebike range.

In my case, it's not every day, it's narrow country lanes, it rains, it involves transporting kids and equipment.

You seem to be claiming it's better to travel 50 miles a day by car than 10 miles a day, which is clearly wrong.

> You seem to be claiming it's better to travel 50 miles a day by car than 10 miles a day, which is clearly wrong.

I don’t understand at all how you interpret what I said to mean this.

You're saying that "Pushing around a big car to travel what is essentially walking distance is a waste"

Order these in desirability:

1) Not travelling 2) Travelling by car for 2 miles 3) Travelling by car for 20 miles 4) Travelling by car for 200 miles

I've already done it. In no world is it better to own a car and travel 200 miles than it is to own the same car and travel 20 miles. In all worlds it's better to not travel at all.

You are saying that "you shouldn't drive 3 miles". Unless you are also saying "you shouldn't drive 30 miles" and "you shouldn't drive 300 miles" you're being a hipocritte.

The reason I'm such a fan of taxes on externalities is to stop micromanagers saying "you shouldn't do that specific journey in that specific way", and instead give financial incentivies to do the right thing.

If the lifecycle of a car that lasts say 150,000 miles costs $5k in externalities up front and $15k in externalities, then charge those externalities -- $5k on the purchase price, then 10c per mile.

Even in a situation where the first 2 miles costs more per mile (because in an ICE the engine needs to warm up), then charge 20c for the first 2 miles and 10c after that. Someone doing 2 miles will pay 40c, someone doing 20 miles will pay $2.20.

I can understand why you would need to drive 3 miles instead of ride a bike. Your first reply covered that quite well.

The rest of this gibberish. I have no idea how you see this as a reasonable interpretation to either of my posts.

My point was that if it’s feasible to walk or ride a bike someone instead of drive, you should. I didn’t make it well, but I also didn’t suggest you are better driving 10 times further either.

You’ve gone from making a reasonable point to being damned near incoherent.

All Tesla models use still a lot of energy per kilometer so a solar panel is almost useless. A bicycle uses 3 kWh/100 km, while a Tesla uses maybe 20.

If you want more kilometers per day from the solar panel, it makes sense to optimize the car. More streamlining, lightweight composites, narrower tyres, wheel fairings, smaller battery etc. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightyear_One

My understanding is that owners of Tesla do not have to pay for electricity to charge cars. It might be similar to other companies, where their electricity used for charging is currently subsidized also by government.

That might change in future and sooner than we realize, especially when current trend is about self-sustainability. Switching all cars to run on electricity does not mean, that in future there will suddenly be more electricity(that will mainly be green), than we have now, so owners of current Teslas in future might be slapped with extra tax, because they are not self-charging. Future Teslas might have solar panels installed, but hardly that will be concern of Elon Musk, as his main income is not related to Tesla Inc, where he now owns only 18% shares and he earns more from space by ripping off NASA.

> My understanding is that owners of Tesla do not have to pay for electricity to charge cars.

Your understanding is incorrect.

A cheap, easy to set up solar car port in the driveway would make more sense for suburban dwellers. Guessing HOA's would lose their shit though.

> Guessing HOA's would lose their shit though.

Perhaps there should be legal escape hatches from HOA rules specifically for energy efficiency upgrades. I don't generally advocate for centralization of power (ie, a state imposing its will on a community), but in the case of climate change I'll happily make exceptions.

I think HOAs can be overridden.

For example, the FCC has a carve-out that allows you to put up a satellite dish, in spite of any HOA regulation.

Honestly I don't see why we can't just outlaw HOAs. If you own something you should be able to do whatever you want with it. It seems like a simple constitutional right to me.

> If you own something you should be able to do whatever you want with it. It seems like a simple constitutional right to me.

However, if a group of people want to make a legally enforceable agreement between themselves for their mutual benefit, then it shouldn't be possible for one of them to renege on that agreement later.

See also: easements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement). You can own property but if an easement exists then you can't do whatever you want with it. If easements were suddenly unenforceable, chaos would ensue. So the matter is certainly not as simple as "if you own something you should be able to do whatever you want with it".

I personally hate the idea of HOAs, so I agree with you on a gut level.

Taking a wider view, HOAs are a form of free association and I can't condemn them entirely. If people want to subject themselves to complete hell, they should be able to. And frankly, the kind of neighborhood that has an HOA is not the place I'd want to live anyway, so it's not like I'm personally missing anything.

That said, the existence of HOAs should not be a driver for climate change, and aesthetics and property values are a really stupid thing to optimize for when we're facing catastrophic climate collapse.

>HOAs are a form of free association and I can't condemn them entirely.

I think an argument against this is that the HOA follows the property, not the consumer. If I could opt out of an HOA when purchasing a home, it wouldn't be so bad. (but then again, the HOA would likely be severely weakened.)

The same goes for overbearing counties and their permitting. If I could just shirk off the local regulations or they could be opt-in, the world would be a much different place.

An HOA is effectively just a contractual micro-state, and conversely, some counties are a scaled HOA.

That said, I agree with you. I think HOAs are stupid, at least in the context of telling people what their shrubs should look like or what color to paint their house.

There is literally no place in the world where you can do "whatever you want" with property, for the simple reason that allowing you to do so would dramatically affect your neighbours in ways that would substantially restrict how they can use their property.

It's a fair argument that conversely many types of restrictions on what you can do are unjustified and overly broad, but arguing from the basis that you should be able to do as you please will fall flat on its face because it is so easy to find examples that would massively negatively affect neighbours.

> dramatically affect your neighbours in ways that would substantially restrict how they can use their property.

Well yes, if you practice the tuba at 3am, raise alligators in your backyard, and beekeeping in your front yard, then yes.

But painting your house? Building a shed? Parking a car in the driveway? Building a fence? Adding architectural ornaments? Install solar panels? None of this stuff affects neighbours.

> Examples: no cars parked on your front yard.

This would be too far. If the front yard and car are both my property it is not for anyone else to tell me what to do with them.

If driving the cars on and off your property does not in any way affect your neighbours, I'd be with you. But restrictions on numbers of cars are often used as a proxy for restricting traffic and noise.

E.g. near me planning regulations generally prevent new construction from creating more than an average of 1.5 parking space per housing unit, to prevent further strain on the transport network. One might argue it's a poor proxy, as some people will have cars just sitting around, but it tends to work reasonably well.

There certainly is over-reach, and one of my pet peeve is that restrictions like this (and ideally all regulations and laws) ought to have stated justifications as part of the text, and "test conditions" to validate if they achieve the goal, as it's often hard to unpackage why the rules are the way they are, but a lot of these restrictions do have a reasoning behind them as well. Whether or not one agree about that reasoning is a separate issue, but I think a lot of conflict over these kinds of regulations boils down to not knowing the reasoning behind them.

I think there is a spectrum of regulation that happens the closer you live to other people.

I had a friend who lived in a dome house. It could not have been built in an incorporated area of his state.

Yeah, I think that as long as you don't live in a 300 year old historical district that needs to maintain its nationally-valued historical look, and the dome is built to building/fire code, nobody should have the right to tell you you can't build a dome house on property that you own.

If I own the land, I fucking own it, and I solely decide what is done with it. The HOAs do not own it, and they can fuck off. I live in the land of the free, and I'll build my dome. Mandatory HOAs should be outlawed.

HoAs are how neighborhoods fund communal property like pools, parks, plowing of parking lots, etc...

Where you get into trouble is when they also try to enforce "property value" guidelines, which tend to become "against whatever the most power tripping person on the council thinks is 'ugly'". Solar panels are exactly the sort of thing that can be considered "ugly" and end up being banned. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

> HoAs are how neighborhoods fund communal property like pools, parks, plowing of parking lots, etc...

All of that stuff can exist without HOAs. If you want access to communal property and a communal parking sticker, you can require a membership fee. As long as it's reasonably priced I'd most likely gladly pay for access to parks and communal facilities and stuff like that. It should be optional, but for the above, I'd be likely to opt in and I'm sure most people would.

But no, I would not pay for them to come and yak at me for how I should decorate my front yard and house.

Eliminate HOAs and you've destroyed the basic mechanism that makes common maintenance practical for high-density non-rental housing.

It seems to me HOAs aren't mostly about maintainence, they're mostly about old farts yelling at you for installing a fence or planting the wrong type of flower or using the wrong color of paint.

None of that stuff affects maintainence. Those farts shouldn't even be allowed to step on land they don't own.

The stuff that actually affects maintainence, I can understand, but participation should be optional by law. If you want discount maintainence, don't mess with your water pipes and electrical conduits. But hey if you're okay with finding your own maintainence, you should be entitled to do whatever you want as long as it's legal per fire/building code.

There's a reason I specified 'high-density'. 'Your' water pipes and electrical conduits become only a small part of the whole as soon as you're looking at townhouses, duplexes, or even just small homes sharing a lot and utility connections.

How do you intend to make participation in maintenance of a highrise building, of which you occupy one unit, optional? [1]

HOAs don't make a lick of sense for suburban blocks, but you can't do without them when you share a building.

[1] You could try the Soviet model, where people took care of their personal apartments, while the common areas and infrastructure of most buildings would go to shit. I've seen it, I'm not eager to re-live it.

For highrise buildings I agree that you should need approval to touch the utility infrastructure.

I was referring more to HOAs for suburban blocks, which are extraordinarily common in the US. Many of them are obsessed about whether you can park your car in the driveway, what kind of car you're allowed to own, what kinds of plants you can plant in your front yard, the color of your house, modifications to the aesthetics of your house, and other stupid things. Welcome to the "land of the free".

You absolutely do not need a controlling HOA just to maintain common areas. My neighborhood considered a HOA for the common park areas but in the end the land was transferred to the city and maintenance is paid via property taxes. No HOA to tell us what flowers we can plant.

So what do you do about townhouses that share walls or homes that share enclosed backyards?

HOAs are a US thing. Would you be surprised to know that high density housing exist elsewhere, with common areas, which are not maintained by HOAs?

Yeah, it does exist in other places not maintained by HOAs.

It's maintained by an organization that is the exact same thing as an HOA, but is called a strata.

Not exactly the same thing, just performs the same function.

HOAs wouldn't be so bad if rules were grandfathered-in when you bought your house.

As the vice president of my HOA (for a few more months) I'm happy to report that I've never heard of a request for solar installation that wasn't approved on the first request.

This is the kind of thing that makes my blood boil. Why is this even an approval? Why do you think you have ANY say over their solar installation? Why does it even have to go through an approval process for anything other than fire/electrical/building safety?

It's not your property. Stay out.

I don't even know. The HOA was here before I moved in. Why are you so angry?

To be literal, the reason I think "I" (actually the HOA) have a say is because a bunch of legal paperwork says so. All the home owners signed it.

A year from now I won't have any say, because I won't be on the board.

Generally, I like the HOA since they mow my lawn. But if you are religiously opposed to being a member of an HOA, then you just wouldn't move into a house that's subject to one. All the people that live in this neighborhood were aware of it before they moved in.

Different people want different things.

> The HOA was here before I moved in. Why are you so angry? To be literal, the reason I think "I" (actually the HOA) have a say is because a bunch of legal paperwork says so. All the home owners signed it.

They were forced to sign it if they wanted to purchase property. If it was optional I wouldn't be angry. To me the entire reason for owning instead of renting would be to be able to modify the hell out of it to my house of my dreams. Yes I could avoid moving into an HOA neighborhood, but HOAs are spreading like viruses and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find a place that doesn't have one.

I would just ask that the law make HOAs optional when purchasing property. If you want the benefits HOAs give you (if any), you're welcome to join, but you shouldn't be forced to join one just because you want to move into a certain district.

> A year from now I won't have any say, because I won't be on the board.

So now the house you supposedly "own" will be governed by some people that you don't even know. If they don't like your yellow car they could make a fit of it. I'm angry because if I owned property in a free country they shouldn't even be legally allowed to make a fit of something that isn't impinging on their freedom.

> Generally, I like the HOA since they mow my lawn.

I'd rather save the HOA fees and pay for a lawnmowing service.

What gives you (accusitorily) the right to deny me from living in a HOA neighborhood?

> So now the house you supposedly "own" will be governed by some people that you don't even know.

"Governed?" I wouldn't really say that. I'm still allowed to take a shit whenever I want, and use as much toilet paper as I feel is right and proper.

If you want to argue about the existence of HOAs, I'm probably not the best counterparty. I don't feel too strongly one way or another. Just giving my perspective on whether HOAs would "lose their shit" over solar panels.

> What gives you (accusitorily) the right to deny me from living in a HOA neighborhood?

I don't deny you from your right to live in an HOA neighborhood, but I strongly oppose the HOA making it a requirement that you join them. It should be optional, and you can join if you want.

Well, that's kind of my understanding about what an HOA neighborhood even is.

The existence of a (mandatory) HOA seems to increase property value. I have no economics training, but this seems to be a signal from the invisible hand that they are generally desirable in those cases.

The only ways they're likely to go away is if they're regulated out of existence, or they fall out of favor in a way that's reflected in property value.

Agreed. It should be illegal for a HOA to have any involvement in such decisions within personal property.

We had a few many years ago that were denied on aesthetic grounds and then approved after redesign (I was president of my HOA then). But then my state passed a Solar Access law that makes HOA covenants against solar panels unenforcible, so the problem solved itself.

To my neighbors who don't like solar panels because they "decrease property values" (the favorite bugaboo of HOAs), I reply that in 10 years any house that does not have solar panels will be perceived as deficient, especially in the southwestern US.

A solar carport doesn't save you from having to plug the car in to charge it. That's the real appeal of having "wireless charging" (solar) panels on your car.

I think where it might help is that time when the notch of power consumption matches the peak of power production: the middle of the day.

That is the time when a car parked in the hot sun causes the internal A/C to run to keep the car cooler.

Telsa cars will run the A/C when the internal temperatures reach 105°F (configurable)

This might be a good time to counterbalance the battery loss with the solar power peak.

He didn't mention the semi ? The large flat area, long time under the sun, difference of market (no need to integrate it pretty, a simple flatbed on top would do)

Semi trucks and trailers are two different components. Most trailers have a large flat area, but these can get swapped often. And even within the same company you won’t always have the solar trailer hooked up to the electric semi. The swappable nature of the load is part of the appeal of semis.

I guess what I’m saying is, even if you had a solar trailer, you would lose a lot of the load flexibility of using a semi truck. And you wouldn’t want to plan a load where you needed the solar power. So either way, you’re planning for charging at fixed intervals. Solar might help a little here, but not very much.

Couldn't it make the cost of shipping cheaper if the the load is able to contribute some energy to the truck?

You'd need some sort of standard for the trailer to provide electricity to a hybrid/electric truck but ignoring that (major) issue it seems like a pretty great idea.

But it makes the trailers significantly more expensive and the shipping cost more variable because the amount contributed by the trailer will be extremely variable. On top of that to cut down on cost you'd want the inverters to be on the tractor instead of the trailer but now you have truckers working around and having to plug and unplug live HV DC connectors as they connect and disconnect. Plus now the trailers are a hazard to worry about when they're just sitting around because there's all those solar cells creating big DC volatages just waiting for a circuit to be made.

I see, unless there's an army of solar trailers it's not useful.

Trailer manufacturers could make all trailers solar (panels on the roof of the trailer) and have a battery pack somewhere in the area a refer unit would sit. This way you could power the refer if there was one or the the Truck if there was no refer unit and the Truck was electric. They become a energy storage unit while not in use (sitting in lots). I think this is what we'll see when there will be more Electric Semi's on the road.

In a fantasy world unrestricted by physics and market and costs and raw materials, - yes, they could.

Wabash is already pivoting to special composites to lighten trailers for EV Tractors. I'm sure as new technology makes itself available they will start to think about solarizing their trailers. Right now they run their refers off of propane, switching to battery/electric would be a welcomed change. A trailer can spends days to weeks and even a month in a yard waiting for a tractor and could possibly charge a very large battery in that time. As a side note they could also add regenerative braking to the trailer axles.

> A trailer can spends days to weeks and even a month in a yard waiting for a tractor

Imagine what a similar investment in a stationary solar panel in that same yard would yield, a panel that will charge 100% of time.

>Imagine what a similar investment in a stationary solar panel in that same yard would yield, a panel that will charge 100% of time.

That will have to be rolled out by the yards not the manufacturers of trailers. Trailers are leased as very few companies buy them.

Semis use immensely more power than passenger cars, way more, proportionately, than is made up in increased surface area for solar.

It still doesn't work.

The only reason it might kind of work on a car is because it is only driven a handful of miles per week. Long haul trucks don't even make much sense to electrify with current technology.

Delivery trucks make a little more sense, but they still have the problem of being in motion for a large chunk of the day. Basically you're just slightly increasing your watt mileage/range on sunny days.