Down in Florida and elsewhere, people in retirement communities keep electric golf carts to get around and go to the stores. Having a solar panel on the roof of the cart to keep it charged for these short intermittent trips would mean these vehicles could be entirely solar powered
The biggest challenge would be the size of the panel; a panel that would charge a golf cart in less than a week would be too big to mount on it. A panel covering the roof of an average house powering a charging station would probably charge it in a day’s time. A far more practical application would be for mobile electronic devices.
They already DO "have panels on the market". They've been shipping test lots out to potential customers for a while now. This article is only referring to their "full-scale" production plant--they've had pilot and proto-scale production lines up and running for quite a while. I don't know about "reasonable $/Watt", as I've seen no direct pricing info. However, all the articles on their product quote prices of less than 1$/watt.
“Cost has always been one of solar’s biggest problems. Traditional solar cells require silicon, and silicon is an expensive commodity (exacerbated currently by a global silicon shortage)”
********
Shortage? Silicon is made from SAND or DIRT. Its expensive because it takes allot of heat energy to purify.