[throwawayboise]

Range needs to be a few hundred miles regardless. Nobody wants to stop and recharge every 90 minutes.

Range, charging speed, and availability of rapid charging points that is close to the availability of gas stations are all essential.

[pmorici]

Yeah that is why I think Aptera is kind of interesting they are concentrating on maximizing range through maximizing efficiency and when you pass a certain efficiency threshold integrated solar charging becomes viable. If they make it to production I can see them being successful with people who don’t need a larger car and live in places where they can’t install a dedicated charger in their parking spot.

[VBprogrammer]

I have a 30 year old diesel camper van which we use once every few weeks. Being a mechanically injected diesel Toyota so it's pretty reliable, the only thing that lets it down is the battery, especially over the winter when it gets used even less frequently.

The obvious solution to this is a small solar panel to keep the battery topped up.

It had never occurred that I'd have to be very careful to park the van in an area where it has good direct sunlight (it's only a 10w panel so anything less than direct sunlight means it's barely producing enough to support the charge controller). The street in which I usually park is south facing but has tallish buildings on both sides.

The upshot of this is I can can't imagine how frustrating it would be if I was counting on the solar panels on the car contributing to its range.

[schwartzworld]

> Range needs to be a few hundred miles regardless

No way. Who drives that much day to day? A little electric vehicle for commuting / errands doesn't need that kind of range if it can charge fast enough. Sure, some people need more than that, but if you're taking a handful of long trips per year, you can just rent a car with longer range for those purposes.