Solar Roof Concept Ford C-Max - pretty cool, its a start!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-02/ford-adds-solar-cells-to-recharge-electric-concept-car.html

A creative idea.

At 300 W, the solar panels alone won't do much. It takes 6.93 kWh for me to fully recharge my Fusion. That would be 23 hours of sunshine. But with the solar concentrator they describe, that magnifies the sun 8x, that would bring charging time down to 2 hours and 53 minutes if all of that solar energy could be turned into Watts.

Georgia Tech, which is working on this, is right down the road from me. I'd be willing to go down there and volunteer to test this thing for a couple of years if they give me the car and a couple of concentrators. I think my office landlord would let me dedicate a space for the concentrator and I've got room in my driveway for another.

Here's another article on this:
http://insideevs.com/ford-c-max-solar-energi-concept/

I like the idea, but it's still early. The only thing I didn't like about this was Ford is trying to pimp this idea and the C-MAx while they pretty much have never cared to talk about the FFE. It kind of tells you where they are at in that conversation.

I saw the concentrating sun idea on you tube a few years back, where a guy demonstrated a clunky homemade version on a very small scale. It worked pretty well but was roughly constructed. I remember thinking that if they could somehow incorporate small lenses above or in each solar cell it might be more practical.

Just like the batteries.... With current day technology the solar panels are still too inefficient.
However if the car sat 6-7 hours in good sun you might get 1.5 -2kw not too bad.