If they can make them as cheap as silicon then obviously people will buy them instead, but it's not clear to me that panel efficiency is a relevant factor in the economics of commercial solar power.
HN user
realityman
Covering an entire Prius with exotic semiconductors is not the road to brisk sales.
Does the math check out? You would need about 10kW-h to get the claimed distance, times three for the efficiency (by the way, there are NO mass-produced cells with 34% efficiency; they must be using GaAs or multijunction cells to achieve 34%) means solar input of 30kW-h per day. The projected horizontal area of a Prius is 8m^2 (including the windows) so we need about 4 hours of 1000W/m^2 insolation. Which I guess isn't totally impossible. Typical average insolation at populous latitudes is around 200W/m^2.
A better way to understand Kafka is to fill a room with rakes, turn of the lights, and walk around.
California requires solar power on every new house. It's a huge cost. Most local governments also require off-street parking, which is a huge cost. The regulatory burden isn't just in planning and permitting.
The number of housing starts in Los Angeles right now is basically zero[1]. 30 years ago the pace of home building in LA was three times higher with a population 20% smaller.