Honestly it seems like a no-brainer to me to put a solar panel on the roof of electric cars to increase their action radius, so I figured there’s probably one or more good reasons why they don’t.
Also, I acknowledge that a quick google could answer the question, but with the current state of google I don’t want to read AI bullshit. I want an actual answer, and I bet there will be some engineers eager to explain the issues.
The math doesn’t work out unless it’s an ultra light car. Check Aging Wheels video on the Aptera for more. The first few minutes, he covers the technical stuff on car mounted pv.
What I have seen previously is that the amount of energy you get from the solar cells that you could fit on the top of the car is really small compared to what it takes to charge the battery.
Since there is minimal benefit, and it’s costly to include them and wire them to the battery, it hasn’t been viewed as worthwhile.
In addition to the other points about efficiency, there is also the maintenance and added weight in a high location on the car that would impact stability and safety. Keeping that slab or solar cells from majing a crash worse would be a large undertaking for example.
Solar panels now are like tube tvs. If we make a breakthrough on paintable or extremely thin and flexible solar cells like we did with the leap to flatscreen tvs then it would be much more likely as the costs come down even if they still provided only a small charge.