Analysis of Solar Powered Electric Vehicles

One of the key inhibitors to the purchase of Electric Vehicles (EVs) in most countries is range anxiety. EVs generally have a range between 100-200km on a full charge which is suitable for city driving but the same cannot be said for long distance highway driving. Using solar panels on an EV can help mitigate this problem as a typical solar panel might be able to supply sufficient amount of energy to the battery to ensure increased range by charging its battery pack during both during standstill and moving states. This paper aims to present the improvement in range that can be brought about by using solar photo-voltaic (PV) modules on an EV. The model has been developed and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink environment. The results demonstrate that PV module can charge the battery to a reasonable state of charge. Further, in order to portray the benefits offered by solar PV based EV, an energy benefit analysis has also been performed to highlight the achieved energy savings.