frezik ,

The sun gives you around 1500W per m2. If sun shines at maximum brightness for 24 hours, you get 36kwh per day. That's enough to fully charge a small EV every day. That's a spherical chicken estimate.

Bringing this to numbers that exist in the real world, the sun will only give you about 20% of that over the course of the day, and the panels are around 20% efficient. You'll get more like 1.4kwh per day per m2. You can double or triple that, depending on how much surface area you can cover. An EV can get around 3 miles per kwh, so tripling that number will get you 12 miles. Considering the extra costs involved (both in buying the panels and adding weight), it's not even worth it as a supplementary source.

There's some possibilities for RVs, which have a lot of roof space for panels, tend to sit in one spot for days or weeks, and have other power usages that are a lot less than driving. Otherwise, put the solar panels over the parking places and roadways, not on the cars.

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