Solar Project Adds Solar Panels to the Top of a Tesla Model Y, But Will It Work?

Solar Array in Action

DartSolar

There is another attempt to create a solar-powered Tesla. DartSolar is pitching a drivable solar array to self-charge your car. Companies are experimenting with this concept, aiming to enhance the sustainability and self-sufficiency of EVs. A solar-powered Tesla would be amazing, no doubt. But it isn’t happening. That is not this writer's opinion, but the guy who may be the biggest fan of both solar and Tesla: Elon Musk.

A New Solar Addition for Tesla

Taking on the challenge is an ambitious company working on the "drivable solar array," currently in beta, designed to self-charge EVs. The company uses a Tesla Model Y test vehicle with nine large solar panels. The website states that “Beta One is light enough to be carried on the roof rack of your EV. It weighs less than 165 lbs. When expanded, it fits in a standard parking spot.”

Beta One features flexible solar panels without junction boxes, allowing for flat shipping and simple assembly into four sections. Projected to be priced at $4,000 USD and using nine 175-watt panels, Beta One claims to generate 6 kWh daily, providing about 20 miles (32 kilometers) of EV range with five hours of sunlight.

Payback on Investment

The amount of energy generated and range gained on an EV with these panels will obviously vary depending on the location, weather, and the vehicle, but how long would it take to recoup the initial investment? Without taking into account any range decrease due to the reduced aerodynamics and increased weight, owners would be looking at about $0.97 USD in daily savings (based on 16.21 cents per kWh average in the U.S.) when using these solar panels.

Before you even take into account the look of the vehicle, the added maintenance, and potential issues, owners would be looking at more than 11 years before making back their initial investment of $4,000.

That’s not to say this project doesn’t have its benefits and use cases. If you’re in a remote location with little access to electricity, this could be an interesting idea, however, it’s not going to make sense for most consumers. Solar requires a lot of space and right now it just makes more sense on a large open area instead of being strapped to the top of a moving vehicle. However, projects such as these continue to push innovation and outside-of-the-box thinking.

Teslas are popular vehicles for solar experiments as we’ve seen before with extendable range extenders.

Elon Musk's Perspective on Solar EVs

Musk recently posted on X: "Earth already receives about the same energy from the Sun in an hour than humanity consumes in a year. Solar panels just need to catch a tiny amount of it to power our entire civilization!" Despite acknowledging the immense potential of solar energy, Musk remains doubtful about its application in EVs due to limited surface area. In this video clip, he gives a simple explanation for his 2021 appearance with Joe Rogan.

Aptera's Solar Electric Vehicle: A Case Study

Aptera Motors continues to face the challenge of creating a solar-powered vehicle. The San Diego start-up has been raising funds for a few years to produce its unique, three-wheel sun-powered car. This vehicle can travel up to 1,000 miles on a single charge, up to 40 miles powered solely by solar energy.

Aptera's Solar Powered Car

Aptera

Aptera's vehicle is aerodynamically optimized and built with lightweight materials. Its unique shape and solar panel integration set it apart from traditional EVs, showcasing the potential of solar energy in transportation.

The integration of solar energy with EVs represents a frontier in sustainable transportation. While challenges such as surface area limitations exist, innovations like DartSolar’s Beta One and Aptera's solar electric vehicle may pave the way for a sunny and greener future.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

Not a Tesla App

Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

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Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

Robert Rosenfeld / YouTube

As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

Not a Tesla App

Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time

Not a Tesla App

You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

Tesla also recently introduced a new voice command. Asking, “What’s the weather?” or something similar will now bring up Tesla’s weather popup.

The weather pop-up above the ETA

Not a Tesla App

One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a radar overlay centered on your vehicle. It’ll animate through the radar data over the last 3 hours so that you can see the direction of the storm, but you can also pause it at any point.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, even if you zoom out. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

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