Autobayng News Team
- Nissan’s built a one-off Ariya with solar panels that can add up to 14.3 miles per day in ideal sun, but far less in cloudier cities.
- A sunny 50-mile drive generated roughly 0.5 kWh of power—roughly 2 miles of “free” range trickling into the battery.
- Solar EVs still haven’t taken off: Lightyear failed, Toyota and Hyundai’s gains are small and Aptera’s launch timeline is uncertain.
The Nissan Ariya isn’t the world’s most exciting EV, with so-so specs and a forgettable design that lead to it failing in the U.S. But Nissan just made it a lot more interesting, slapping solar panels onto a one-off prototype for extra range. The experimental car can add up to 14.3 miles of range per day in heavy sunlight, even if that requires perfect conditions. In the real world, the company says the car can get up to 13.2 miles of range per day while tooling around sunny Dubai, or just 6.3 miles of extra oomph in cloudy London.
Taking the car on a two-hour 50-mile (80 km) trip on a sunny day added 0.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity to the battery pack, Nissan claims, which is just under 2 miles (3 km) of extra range. That’s not a lot, but it is free range harnessed from the sun . Over the course of the year, it can reduce charging frequency by between 35% and 65% according to Nissan, although this heavily depends on how long the daily commute is and whether the car is parked outside.
This sun-loving Ariya was created in partnership with Lightyear, the solar car company that wanted to produce its own vehicles but whose manufacturing arm declared bankruptcy after only building a handful of cars. It has around 40.9 square feet (3.8 square meters) of solar panels split between its hood, roof and tailgate, which convert sunlight into DC power that goes straight into the battery.
Nissan doesn’t have any plans to offer a solar array on its production electric cars in the near future, but according to the company’s electric powertrain boss, Shunsuke Shigemoto, “by exploring how vehicles can generate their own renewable energy, we are opening the door to new opportunities for customers – greater freedom, reduced charging dependency, and a cleaner future. This concept is not just a technical milestone; it’s a vision of how Nissan intends to lead the next phase of electric mobility.” More On This
The automaker is going toward offering a solar array that customers can actually buy, at least in Japan. Its Ao-Solar Extender for the Sakura kei EV is an extending roof-mounted sunshade that can add up to about 3,000 km (1,860 miles) a year in ideal conditions—roughly 36 miles (58 km) per week—although we don’t know when it will be made available or how much it will cost.
It makes intuitive sense to put solar panels on electric vehicles to extend range. Most cars spend most of their time outside, bathing in photons. However, there are hardly any EVs currently in production with a factory-installed solar array because the electricity they produce and the subsequent range gains generally aren’t worth the effort and cost.
There are a handful of electric vehicles that offer a much smaller solar array than this Nissan. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 used to have a small optional solar panel in some markets, but it could only add 3 miles (5 km) of range per day in ideal conditions, which owners on forums explain was around double the actual daily gains they observed.
The only other production car that offers something like this is the Toyota bZ4X, whose solar roof added 1,118 miles (1,800 km) per year when exposed to “2.200 hours of sunshine per year in Nagoya, Japan,” Toyota claimed, which works out to 7.2 miles (11.6 km) per day.
The first purpose-built solar EV set to enter production is the Aptera three-wheeler. The company says it’s on track to begin limited production this year, but it has missed deadlines before—several times—and solar EV startups (like Lightyear or Sono Motors) tried to bring their vehicles to market and failed. In general, solar EVs appear to be more promise than reality right now. But as the Nissan concept shows, we’re getting closer to solar-powered EVs every day. We want your opinion! What would you like to see on Insideevs.com? – The InsideEVs team
