[MikeBoxwell]

As you probably already know, the Nissan LEAF has a tiny solar panel on the rear spoiler. I had the opportunity to meet the head of R&D for Nissan in Europe recently and was asking him about it.

The size of the panel is tiny, and it is an amorphous panel, so it really doesn't generate a lot of power at all: at a guess, I'd suggest it generates 5-6 watts maximum, which is really not much use for anything other than maybe charging up your mobile phone or a sat nav unit on a sunny day.

A year or so back I wrote a book on solar power and so we ended up doing some rough figures to work out what could be achieved with a proper solar roof on the Nissan LEAF. After all, leaves are supposed to photosynthesize, so a Nissan LEAF should photosynthesize as well...

The figures were quite interesting. The roof of the car is large enough to fit a 300 watt panel. We calculated that this could provide quite a useful amount of power. Enough to provide between 2,800-3,000 miles a year of driving in California or Florida. Further north the figures aren't so good, but they're still respectable: around 2,000 miles in Chicago, for instance.

In Europe, the figures aren't quite so good. In damp and dull London, for instance, the range would be down to around 1,400-1,500 miles a year. But for a car that isn't designed to be a sun powered car, with seating for five people and highway performance, I think that is pretty impressive.

The downside? Well, right now it all comes down to cost. The additional cost per car would be in the region of $4,000 which makes it just far too expensive to be considered as a useful option. However, solar prices are continuing to drop. Within 3-5 years, I wouldn't write off the possibilities of Nissan offering a proper solar panel on the top of their LEAF electric car...

[mikexilva]

I still would like too know why can't we scale this micro solar car:
http://www.thinkgeek...rogoodies/9e8d/
to a real sized car like the leaf...

That small solar car seems to speed up pretty fast for it's size and doesn't have batteries so it's all direct solar powered
check it out here:

This post has been edited by mikexilva: 01 June 2010 - 01:48 PM