Tesla Model 3 with solar roof option
Once Elon Musk was the CEO of a company called Tesla Motors, that built amazing electric cars. Now that company is just Tesla. No longer produces only electric cars, it also makes energy storage systems, with solar panels and tiles to be added to Tesla’s production soon.
Cars with solar roofs aren’t new, hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius or the Fisker Karma had them even when the efficiency of the solar cells made back then was lower than it’s today.
Fisker Karma solar panel
Now we have cheaper solar cells that are also more efficient. Electric cars with solar roofs becoming the norm is just a question of time.
Tesla’s SolarCity acquisition will have a major roll in putting solar panels in our houses and cars.
Recently Elon Musk in a tweet response clarified what he meant about the use of Tesla Glass in the company’s electric cars.
@John_Gardi We will probably offer that as an option
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 4, 2016
Not only Tesla cars will have glass roofs as option, they’ll probably have solar roofs as well in a not very distant future.
Tesla Model S with glass roof
In a more distant future we might see the glass and solar roofs combined in a unique transparent solar roof, now that transparent solar cells already exist.
I find the solar roof specially useful in those sunny days at the beach when there isn’t any parking spot in the shade. The solar roof can help to cool the car and battery.
What do you think? Do you find the solar roof useful? Or it’s just a cool but not very useful gadget?
More info:
Tesla Model 3 will probably have a solar roof option – maybe even ‘deployable’, says CEO Elon Musk
It’s fluff. You’d be lucky to get 100 watts from it at noon, on a sunny day, if you live in the tropics, and much less at other times and places.
The solar panels of the Karma Revero are rated at 200 W and the Toyota Prius Prime are 180 W. Tesla solar panels should be at least 250-300 W. Even 100 W helps to run a fan inside the battery.
In sunny places like California it could sell relatively well, even if in most cases it’s just a cool gadget.
Agree fluff as it will generaly have bad angles to the sun and most Tesla owners will park their cars in garages limiting its usefulness…
Now if it was used as the Prius with a small one just to power a fan that would be more useful…
In the future with the decrese in pricing and increase in effiency of solor cells it would be better but Tesla will probably sell a number of them and that is ok too as it will help boost there bottom line which they can then use to turn out more awsome EVs…
If the solar roof costs 3000,- extra and generates an average of 3kWh per day, it would pay back in ~10 years- works fine for me.
Another thing: The generated electricity could feed and active balancing circuit. With this, the car could balance the cells at any SoC. Maybe that´s even more benefit than charging…
lo
I like to think of it as a unique selling point for EVs. If they can keep the costs down, having a few extra miles each day is very good publicity. And vampire drain is not.
Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.
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The first Tesla I saw at an EV show, donkey years ago, had a solar roof. Tesla abandoned that idea for very good reasons
solar roof, sounds good. transparent even better as I enjoy star gazing. yay Tesla
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