This SunPower + Nissan video -- http://us.sunpowercorp.com/psp/nissan-leaf/ -- that illustrates how solar-charged driving works is yet more evidence of how much awareness of EV + PV is growing right now.

Okay, so I might be a little bit weird, but this SunPower + Nissan LEAF flash video just makes me smile.

Why?

It's a combination of self-satisfied smirkiness and happiness. The smirkiness comes from the "I told you so" and "I was right" part of me. When I discovered two and a half years ago that there were a small number of folks out there pioneering solar-charged driving, I knew then that it was absolutely going to take off.

Appeal of EV + PV
How could it not? EV + PV has tremendous environmental appeal, great economic appeal, and, this is most important, the huge appeal of fueling independence, which is made all the more appealing by a stick-it-to-the-big-oil-guys angle.

Now, two and a half years after I started SolarChargedDriving.Com -- still the only site on the web that I know of devoted exclusively to covering the solar + EV synergy -- my instincts about solar-charged driving are being proven right, again, and again, and again.

No, solar-charged driving's not huge yet -- but it will be. And, believe me, it's way bigger than it was two and a half years ago when there were absolutely no automaker + solar, or solar + EV charging station company partnerships, far less solar (at least in the U.S.), and essentially no production EVs.

Green fuel for an EV
So, that's the self-satisfied, smirkiness part of the smile I get when watching this SunPower + Nissan LEAF video -- which, by the way does a great job of using the color green to convey the essential green-ness of solar-charged driving.

The happiness part of the smile is just sheer exuberance and delight at the fact that: a) you can power a full-sized car with solar energy instead of dirty oil or coal; b) the fact that big automakers such as Nissan and Ford and GM and Mitsubishi are really starting to get it; that is, they now understand that EV buyers, especially the early ones, want solar.

Solar-charged driving revolution, here we come!

Related articles-->

• REC Solar, GE partnership fuels growing trend
• Ford teams up with SunPower
• GM to build more than 200 solar EV charging stations
• Solar-charged driving 101