Engineer Omid Sadeghpour has designed and built an on-vehicle charging system for his Tesla Model Y. Now, whenever he parks it in a sunny lot, he can deploy the panels; and rather than merely baking the interior of the car, he's generating juice.

"I can reliably get 20 miles to 60 miles per day," Sadeghpour writes. "I can expand these solar panels with ease, and contract them when I want to start driving."

"The reason I can pack so many solar panels is because I am using telescoping carbon fiber tubes as my mechanism of expansion and contraction, as opposed to mechanical sliders. This allows me to pack 4000 watts of solar on a Tesla, without going over the max roof weight capacity of 165 lbs."

Once expanded, Sadeghpour's DartSolar Beta One system fits within the footprint of a parking space.

When stowed for driving, "you can drive it anywhere — it can withstand bumps, water, snow, nature," he writes.

The system is not limited to Teslas, of course, and Sadeghpour reckons it costs about $4K all in. It's still in beta, and he's charting the ongoing development process at dartsolar.com.

"If every EV had a rooftop solar panel, it could significantly contribute to the energy needs of most countries. With a large battery bank, an EV is the ideal power bank for most catastrophic events. Gone are your doomsday worries. Perfect to glam-camp in the forest."

If you're interested in the engineering details:

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