Tesla’s next killer app: solar power on its electric cars – starting with Cybertruck

Solar power on electric cars has yet to become a common feature, but Tesla is about to change that – starting with the Cybertruck electric pickup. We’ve discussed solar roofs on electric vehicles before, most recently with the one on the latest Prius Prime, but the recurring problem is that they rarely generate enough power to be worth it. For example, we estimated that the solar cells on the Prius Prime’s roof could generate enough power to add about ~2 miles of range during the day. And of course, that’s highly dependent on where you are in the world and where you park your car. However, solar power technology has been improving greatly and it is increasingly starting to make more sense. There are even startups, like Sono Motors and Lightyear, developing electric vehicles mainly powered through onboard solar power. Tesla CEO Elon has been looking into the idea for years. In 2017, he said that he pushed his Tesla engineers to look into integrating solar cells on Model 3, but they concluded that it wasn’t worth it at the time.