.....
Is the roof of a Tesla a solar panel?
Why not? If you park your car for day or two, when you come back it should have more of a charge than when you left it. My $20.00 yard lights have them...
Is there a solar panel on the back of your phone?
Why not?
If you set your phone down on your desk for a while, when you pick it up again it should have more of a charge than when you left it. My $2.00 calculator has one...
Bigger question, why has no one brought this up already? They seem like obvious questions to me.
.....
The amount of square feet available on an average Tesla roof would be enough for a solar cell with an output of approximately 100 watts...under perfect conditions, mind you. If you parked outside, you might get two hours' worth of perfect solar input. The lowest Tesla version has a battery output of 150 amp hours, up to 250 amp hours for the models with solid roofs (the roadster has 416 amp hours, but a removable targa roof). One amp is roughly equivalent to 120 watts, so, the base model would require 120 x 150ah to charge, or 18,000 watts.
Let's say a solar cell on a Tesla got (2 x 100) + (8 x 50) hours of charging in a day. That's 600 watts. I think you can see that the numbers just don't add up.
https://www.galvinpower.org/how-many-amp-hours-is-a-tesla-battery/
Still, it would be a good idea on a Lucid, because it has a separate battery to supply power to things like the entertainment system. And a solar panel would work great for that.