solar...??

[ws6]

has anyone thought of putting solar panels on the body of the car to recharge the battery a little to give longer run times... i mean it wont do much but it should help a little right...??

[SteveK]

Tamiya made a solar car some years ago. I never saw it run, but it sounded like the full-size solar cars: Not very powerful, that odd shape to get the solar cells up top, etc. I have the article in the my workshop.

Novel concept, but solar cells just can't put out the amperage you'd need, and are very delicate too so they probably wouldn't stand up to the abuse, and they likely wouldn't supply enough power to make a difference.

[Sharkey]

it would be cool if you could have them to put a bit more juice in the pack, but it wouldnt do much. the big ones they have for rv's only charge at less than 1/2 an amp.

[TEM]

I think that tamiya car was called the solar eagle. megabucks for that thing.

Solar is unpractical in RC use. Too expensive, too fragile, too heavy, and too low in performance. Have you considered which direction you would have to point them? The amount of power they produce is non linear considering you are not able to feed them with a linear light input(turing, clouds, etc) and therefore even if they did make real power, it would not benefit your driving/handling.

If you can't make the runtime, you've got much bigger problems than solar panels would solve.