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In last years, increasing fleet electrification, improvement in solar panel efficiency and reduction in their costs are concurring toward an increasing attention to the integration of photovoltaic in road vehicles. As in fixed plants, the adoption of solar tracking systems would allow to enhance the solar contribution. But a mobile solar systems for a car must have specific features, due to space constraints and to specific exigencies of a mobile application such as instabilities, energy and aerodynamic losses. Due to these reasons, they should operate only in parking mode. A kinematic model of mobile solar roof, as a parallel robot, has been developed and used to optimize the roof geometry; the benefits of a mobile roof, in terms of solar energy gain at different latitudes and months, have been assessed. A second prototype of solar tracking roof with two degrees of freedom has been then realized, to overcome some mechanical problems.

In last decade, Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) have emerged as real alternatives to engine-driven vehicles, in order to reduce fuel consumption and emissions. But their market share is still limited, as their impact on global fossil fuel demand and CO2 production. In parallel, the possibility of upgrading conventional vehicles to HEV is gaining interest. A research work on the development of a kit for converting a conventional vehicle into a Through-The-Road (TTR) Hybrid Solar Vehicle (HSV) has been recently performed at the University of Salerno, where flexible solar cells, an additional Lithium-Ion battery and two electrically driven wheel-motors have been mounted on a FIAT Punto. Preliminary studies performed by simulation have shown the technical and economic feasibility of this solution. In the proposed vehicle, the control of wheel motors is performed via a Vehicle Management Unit (VMU), which in turn reads data from the OBD port.