The innovation brought by the electric car industry is amazing, and they are constantly trying to find ways to make things even better. A lot of people are asking why aren’t electric cars using solar panels to boost the battery life. The truth is that you can’t really use solar panels due to the way the vehicles are manufactured.

Why are electric cars not focused on solar panels?

At its core, the idea sounds great, because you have a way to fuel your vehicle in a proper manner and without any issues. At the same time, you also end up dealing with a vast range of different situations here too. You will notice that electric cars are becoming more and more versatile, easier to handle, and they try to keep their batteries small. The design of an electric car doesn’t really have space to add a solar panel system.

Elon Musk stated that solar roofs could be an option for their Model 3, but eventually the company just didn’t go with that anymore. Why is that? According to him, the surface of the car is prized real estate, there’s not a lot of it, and most of the unit is inside. He actually wanted to create a solar roof that would unfold from the trunk and then cover the car hood. Not only was this hard to do, it brought more expensive and it wouldn’t look that great either. So yes, while it was visually appealing, it did end up dealing with major issues.

An inefficient design

However, Karma Revero, which is a Tesla competitor, actually has a solar roof. They went with a solar roof that will generate power to drive 1.5 miles after 8 hours of sunlight. This is the reason why don’t electric cars have solar panels. Even with the constant exposure to the sun, you are not getting a lot of power. If anything, the amount you get is used for a few miles and that’s it.

Using the batteries is better because it’s more consistent, dependable, professional and it just gets the job done faster than you would imagine. Sure, it would be great to run solely on solar power, but the truth is that a vehicle needs a lot more power than the sun can provide. Who knows, maybe in the future there will be some very powerful solar systems that will improve quite a bit. Yet until then, we have to rely on battery powered electric cars.

This is still a good idea, and most people understand it. Getting energy from the wall socket is faster, more efficient and you don’t have to worry about touching your car and getting any type of burns due to any solar panel. At least for the time being, using batteries is the right approach, it definitely works as expected, and a lot of people will find this consistent and professional. That’s why we still have mostly battery-powered electric cars. This is the most efficient way to power up these cars, and they do bring in amazing results.