Due to the general lack of effective public transportation, it is necessary for most of us to rely on private transportation and have a car. It’s best to make sure this private transportation is as green as possible, which begs the question, can a car run on solar power?

The amount of energy from the sun that reaches the earth’s surface each day is staggering. There is easily enough power there to power all of human industry and transportation several times over. Much of this energy is either reflected back to space from the surface as light or radiated back into space as infrared energy, which is another name for heat.

The great advantage of solar panels is that they generate electricity from sunlight that is already falling on the earth’s surface. If that energy hadn’t been converted into electricity in the panel, it would have been absorbed by the earth and then released as heat, reflected back into space, or used by a plant to make sugars. The electricity from the panel can be transported and used elsewhere. When used, the energy of electricity is eventually released as heat. This means that a solar panel is effectively converting sunlight into heat, but allowing that conversion to do some work that results in the heat moving to a different location.

This compares favorably with the use of fossil fuels as a source of energy. Because these fuels come from long-buried sources, the heat they add to the atmosphere when they burn is in addition to what would otherwise be there. This means that there is a net increase in energy in the atmosphere, and it is this that raises concerns about climate change.

This makes it clear that being able to use sunlight to power our vehicles is a desirable option. But is this a realistic option? The fact is that this is already being done. Electric car owners use electricity from the grid instead of oil to charge the batteries that power their vehicles. All that needs to be added to this scenario is getting the electricity from a renewable source, such as a home solar installation or solar power plant, and one can effectively drive on sunlight.