[rapjr9]

Which I believe is true for most consumer vehicles. They spend most of their time parked somewhere and little time actually being driven. The same is true of people, they spend 95% of their time sitting and very little time actually being active. However, in both cases peoples perceptions are warped by their exposure to the activity, they only pay attention to their interaction with a vehicle or moving when they do it, so it seems to them to form a major part of their life when actually it is quite small. A well known psychological bias. It is a big surprise for many people when they buy an activity tracker and find out they don't actually do much most of the time. I used to drive two hours a weekday to and from work, about 20,000 miles a year. Using a car continuously all year at 60mph would be 60mph x 365 days/year x 24 hours/day = 525,600 miles/year. So 20,000 miles per year means using a car 3.8% of the time. The other 96.2% of the time it could be charging via solar (and it can charge while driving also). Still, the amount of power from 600W of solar panels on a van is not huge, 4.8kWH per day for 8 hours of intense sunlight per day. Could take a week or three to charge an EV fully. People can choose where to park, so it seems like enough to be useful in many situations. Having solar panels on an EV could mean it would never be truly stranded, though having to wait a day or more to get to a charger might be bothersome. In a rainy/cloudy season solar panels would have much less value. If it was a $500 option on a mass produced EV it seems worthwhile. At $1000 I'd think twice but might still buy it.