Good article. About 10 years ago, I heard a similar report about cheap solar cells using amorphous silicon technology. Amorphous silicon is much cheapter to produce than crystaline silicon solar cells, but has substancially lower efficiency. It has been widely used in low power applications like calculators. It promised cheap home electric power but the results appear to be mixed. Let's hope this new approach has better results.

I think the article makes an overstatement when it suggests, "Solar cells mixed into automotive paint could allow the sun to charge the batteries of hybrid cars, reducing their need for fuel."

Hybrid electric cars require a lot of electrical power. After all, 746 watts = 1 horsepower, and there's no way around that. Parking a hybrid electric car outside all day with solar cells to top off the batteries might save a small amount of gas, but I doubt it would be substancial enough to justify the cost. On the other hand, a more practical approach might be to use solar cells to power a fan to ventilate the car, keeping it cooler during a hot day. That would reduce the need for air conditioning and probably save more fuel than you'd save by directly topping off the batteries.

I've read some good articles recently about the challenges of using solar power for home electricity production. Based on many years of experience, it turned out that one of the big cost drivers were the DC-AC inverters. They're expensive, and they had a pretty high failure rate. Long term tests suggest that the savings from solar electric production were largely wiped out by the cost of replacing failed inverters. There were some other substancial costs for people who wanted to stay on the grid and sell their surplus electricity to the utility company, such as the equipment necessary to manage the flow of electricity out of the home.