Maybe an RV could be covered with solar? The top is much bigger, and if it isn’t charging fast enough you can always pull over and have lunch while the battery catches up.
RV panels make sense for the boondocking use case, where you want to charge computers or power a satellite internet terminal or something, but I can't imagine actually trying to drive on that trickle of juice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmbH-TAM2Wk&list=PLQp8FoQ4t-...
So you’ll be charging at 2~5mi/h, if the sun is shining straight overhead.
It’ll count for something if you park the RV in the sun for a week as you camp somewhere, but on the road it gives you some limping ability and that’s about it. The main benefit is not running the AC off of the engine.
I put 1800W on my RV and that's covering the roof end to end. I'd guess it'd be enough for something like 1-2 miles a day on an electric drive train, assuming you don't use power for anything else.
It's probably more 10~20, possibly as much as 30, if it's a long and sunny summer day FWIW.
For references:
- the F150 lightning gets close to 2 miles / kWh on average, ~1.5 at highway speeds but as much as 3~4 at consistent low speeds
- on the other side of an RV, Volvo markets their FH Electric (cabover semi) for 1.1kWh/km — 0.7 mi/kWh — at 80km/h (50mph), DAF/Innovate UK's Battery Electric Truck Trial yielded similar results (1.08kWh/km over 287000 km), it's also close to the numbers of the electric trucker in their very recent MAN eGTX video (0.83 kWh/km = 0.75 mi/kWh)
But that's assuming you use no power. When I was living in it I was using 50% to 100% of the solar output a day.
It has larger surface area, doesn't weight the vehicle down at all even if it's built in a less weight-efficient way, and the vehicle doesn't need to be exposed to the elements.