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Comment by vladojsem | Hacker News Reader

I get your point. So is roof-based solar pure marketing?

I mean, they're not lying. I just don't think it's worth the opportunity cost for the measly added mileage you get. If they can put solar up there, then I'd rather have a full-glass roof.

EDIT: And now that you make me think about it more, it's just dumb; or maybe an interim solution at best. Because solar panels on the roof of my house is much more scalable, efficient, and for the same power output, less expensive (no one does crash-tests on my house roof). The "interim" part comes from admitting that residential roof solar is quite uncommon, but hopefully not forever.

Let me edit some more with an extreme example: my electric scooter that I ride work every day. I could squeeze some panel on there somewhere, and add a teensy bit of extra mileage. But I won't, because remember that RV solar I talked about? Most of the time it's just sitting there doing nothing, so I ran an extension cord from the inverter to the scooter and electric bicycles. Now our Personal Electric Vehicles are solar-powered, and all I did was run an extension cord. (Tiny though it might be, the RV solar can easily handle a scooter and some bikes.)

Rooftop solar requires landlord permission and wiring a reserved parking space, which works if you own a house and garage but it's a pretty big impediment to wider apartment coverage.

I completely get where you're coming from. Buuuut, in this case it's as if you don't have availability at your apartment for a Level 2 charger, so Hyundai gives you one of those little hand-cranked generators.

Yeah, it would take a lot of squirrels on exercise wheels to add up to what this unit can do.

But none of these are really going to move the car much more than pushing it.

I get your arguments and when I think about it, I agree with you. It is similar to Tesla roof tiles: they are expensive, not so efficient, take longer time to install than regular solar panels. They just look good on your roof (also disputable). You pay extra for the aesthetics ;-)

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