Probably won’t be recouped while you own it. It’ll be many years down the road. TFA covered this, perhaps a rereading is in order. Because what I’m hearing is “every little bit helps”, when in fact that’s not practically true.
$2k on a target $35k mass market EV is not insignificant.
I still stand by the idea that the Venn diagram overlap of "people who can't charge in their own home or work, even on L1" and "people who live somewhere rural/suburban enough to have completely open to the sun parking" is quite small.
L2 charging at a the grocery for 30-45min while you shop will get you as much charge as these solar roof pipe dreams would get you in an entire work week parked in a sunny field of dreams.
Hard to imagine a blackout so long that this would make a difference, that still involved having places to go inside the city, but in theory it could be useful.
Plus it's not from fossil fuel, which you probably care about if you bought an EV.
* The attitude "$2000 is a blip" is why electric cars are expensive.
* People without home electricity (or who live in dense urban areas without parking) are not the market for the car at this time. There is no reason to make everyone else suffer out of theoretical concern for people who don't even own cars now.
* People without home electricity are exactly the market for this car.
* Who is suffering exactly by offering this as an option ?
Also you don't seem to be aware of this but $2000 is a lot of money to some people -- It's more than they spend on personal transportation.
> $2000 is a blip in the price of a car and will be recouped.
If a $2000 price increase saves $50/year (approximate numbers) then it would take 40 years to pay back. But solar panels degrade over timeframes that long.
It also introduces complexity, so the average cost of ownership goes up as owners must repair broken panels, deal with water intrusion from a solar panel roof having more failure points than a solid roof, pay more expensive collision repair costs and so on. The mere existence of a solar roof would increase cost of ownership significantly.
Solar panels to charge EVs just doesn’t make engineering sense.
Not to mention the rest of the car.
* EVs are already ridiculous heavy.
* $2000 is a blip in the price of a car and will be recouped.
* You often don't have a choice whether to park in sun or shade. At least a solar roof gives you some benefits.
* Large percentage of the world don't get to decide to have chargers at home/work.