There should be a button to switch between using solar pannel and gasoline.
we can
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1995/solar-electric.html
http://www.winstonsolar.org/challenge/
Mounting solar pannels on the car adds weight, so it is better to recharge a battery pack at home or work. Tesla recon abot $30,000 of solar pannels on your garage would meet average motoring need. And that way you can also have the secutity of mulyiple fuel sources, wind, biomass, geo-thermal etc.
totally electric vehicles are already capable of meeting our personal transport needs.
an electric motor is far more efficent than ice because:
max torque at 0 means a car like the Tesla, www.teslamotors.com, does 0-60mph in 4 secs, no complicated gearbox, even for off road you can just put a motor in each wheel, see mitsubushi rally car.
no cooling or catalyctic exaust system, no timing belts, cams valves etc, only one moving part, so very reliable.
No warm-up period (on most journeys fossil fuel car engnes never reach optimum operating temperature) No smell, no noise, very enjoyable stressless driving. No energy used when stationary, and energy recovery when slowing down or going downhill.
there should be no button to switch to fossil fuel/infernal combustion. but if you really need to go more than 250 miles without stopping for a 30 minute recahrge then AC propultion provide a towable generator, and when you get to your destination you can drop the dead-weight of the ice and revert to the incredible electric tZero performance