How Many Solar Panels Are Needed To Charge A Tesla

We really need a DC to DC charging option for EV's the Conversion of DC solar input to AC battery output, back to DC battery is also inefficient.

Smart putting the cardboard insulation. 👍

This is good to show for the sake of reality. I get asked all the time why Tesla doesn't make their roofs out of solar panels. People who have never used solar don't really understand the amount of panels and consistent sun it takes. That being said, whole home solar is very affordable these days and people also do not understand how quickly a solar system pays for itself when you're offsetting the cost of gasoline or diesel fuel in a vehicle. Residential solar paired with an EV or two is a very good combination for personal finances.

The channel @solarcannonballrun did this running a tesla from coast to coast. He had a portable system with theoretical power of 6.4kw, but 5kw real world. That took him something like 3 days to charge up his car each time. It's a cool setup with space and weight constraints

Holy cow, that’s a lot more panels that I thought! Great video.

There are some losses when going PV -> battery then battery -> inverter. How much less overhead would there be if your battery was pre-charged to N% and the car was directly charged at a rate similar to what the panels would generate? The battery would serve as a volltage buffer for clouds/etc.

Great video.Some very useful information. More!

Here’s my example: I have a 6 kW solar installation that is good for about 40 kWh on a sunny day. From this I can add about 20 kWh to my Model Y if the car is home and can be charged during the day. I get about 4 miles/kWh, so about 80 miles added in a day. That’s more than enough for my daily driving. The catch is that if my car is at work with me, it’s not charging at home. I have a Powerwall, but its capacity is 13.5 kWh (about 11 kWh if I maintain a 20% reserve on the battery), so that’s the most I can get if I charge the car at night from the Powerwall. And clouds, rain, or snow can dramatically lower the output of the panels. The panels and battery cover the entire load from the house during the day when electric rates are high, and I charge the car at night when rates are low, so it works pretty well for me.

Nice test, good info.

Great practical experiment!

In reality, you could build a 10kW solar charging array for about $10-15k DIY and that would be basically perfect for 80-120 miles per day depending on the vehicle.

Great video. I thinking of buying the ecoflow 3 and some panels to offset my electricity for my M3 and Mx so this video was right on target for me. I also live in Illinois

Great video man.

for all that utility im suprised they did not add a mppt in the bed for direct solar. and they do have bidirectional..

Great video, thanks for the info. Ideally, a foldable solar package that can charge the car directly or at least add 100 miles within a 1-2 day time frame. Also once portable battery packs come down in price, it’ll be great.

My son and I built an electric car about 12 years ago. I drove it to work everyday and charged it at work. We thought about using solar power to charge the car but the problem was that the car was at my workplace all day when the sun was out and back at home at night. The only way we could figure to use solar power at home was to buy another battery pack big enough to store the energy that could then be transferred to the car in the evening. This proved to be way too expensive at the time so we could not use solar power. If you have solar power available at work where the car is all day then you're all set.

Any thoughts on the EV roof rack solar systems? Would you review them?

do you have a calculator for out of US?

Theres a fellow that did a 'solar cannonball run'(name of the youtube channel) using only solar panels and his model Y. He had 6kw of flexible 100 watt panels(they could be stacked like paper so took up less volume than your rigid panels) and they were angled toward the sun. It got him across the country... He used a different inverter/charge controller setup though because of the power input (6kw) What does that ecoflow top out at?

This is the video content I like to see