At noon on the equator, the sunlight sunlight energy about 1 kilowatt per meter squared. Averaged over a sunless day, you may be talking 6-8 kilowatt hours. For a large car, you could probably mount about 6 square meters of solar cells giving a theoretical 36-44 kilowatt hours. Unfortunately, affordable solar cells are about 10% efficient giving you about 1 horsepower peak power or if you use a battery about 4 kilowatt hours of power per day. That would take a car about 15-20 miles per day.
I posted an article a few months ago about a potential solar cell technology that would be 90% efficient. Now you are talking about a car that could be powered over 100 miles per day just on daily solar input. Unfortunately, just the batteries to store this much energy would buy a couple of regular cars. You would also have to deal with minor problems such as winter and rainy days.
If the technology improves, solar could be practical for stationary applications, it could even charge up the batteries on electric cars. Unfortunately, neither the solar cells or batteries are here yet. I posted this article because it may be an improvement on the battery side of the equation.
I don’t know if any of this will ever be practical but I find it very interesting.
DangerDoc, you’re a smarter man than I am.
That’s very good information to have; perhaps
solar cells will get better over time. Thank
you for reply, and not laughing at me :)