Quote Originally Posted by tobo View Post
the real threat to power generators would be solar panel uptake with no offsetting increase in demand from electric cars.
Solar Electric Cars are in development but not sure if they will be so much more expensive than electric car without the solar that they won't become mainstream.
"(Dutch manufacturer) Lightyear is still in the concept phase. It hopes to build 10 cars by 2019. Cost of the completed cars is said to be €119,000."
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/07/07...ome-lightyear/
"Toyota is now offering a solar roof on the Prius Prime that uses solar cells manufactured by Panasonic. Tesla is moving rapidly toward making glass roofs available on all its cars. With is close partnership with Panasonic in the Gigafactory project, there’s a good chance that solar-powered Teslas will be offered in the near future."
Not really a threat. Just apply the laws of physics ... The sun delivers in the outside regions of our atmosphere roughly 1.367 kW/sqm (the so called solar constant). Filter that through the atmosphere and you can get on any one sqm under really good conditions realistically maybe one kW sunlight per hour as input for your solar cells. That's solar energy, not electricity produced by solar panels. Solar panels are rather inefficient in producing electricity - so you are lucky to turn this 1 kW into some 100 W per sqm in electrical power (this is while the sun is shining and hitting the panels at an angle close to 90 degrees).

You have these good conditions only a handful of hours per day on sunny days. On cloudy or foggy days the output is between 1 to 10% of above.

Now - even a small car with a weak electrical engine driven very economically will need between 10 and 20 kW (for how long you choose to drive it). Just do your numbers - a solar roof with a handful of sqm might be a fancy gadget, but it will never power a car - even if you live in a country with 360 days sunshine per year. The numbers just don't add up.

Clearly no danger to the electricity industry.

Thinks might look different if everybody builds a large solar farm onto their front lawn and store the energy in an spare battery for their car. This might work as long as you live in a country without clouds and winter ...