On the solar cell thing: it's really too bad solar cells are a max of around 15% efficient. If engineers could raise the efficiency, you would need fewer of them for the same output. And a lot of progress has been done on the cellophane style cells. These can be formed into whatever shape as opposed to the glass-backed one which are fragile and do not conform well.
I would like to see 1:1 cars with the shell made of solar cells that would supplement wall-charging, or perhaps able to solely recharge the car in 2 days or something. A lesser charge time is not reasonable yet with today's tech. Charging with solar takes a LOT of surface area and a really decent amount of direct sunlight as you go higher in voltage and/or current. Ever figure out how many cells you need for say 20v @ 1A? Try it, you'll be surprised how large (and don't use the OC V and CC A
). But the sun is "free" so why not use it?