I think I figured out the confusion - ICE can mean “internal conversion efficiency” in the context of a solar cell (and in fact 33% is a good number for 2-junction solar conversion efficiency).

But the comment above was about “internal combustion engine” (also abbreviated ICE).

Hence your EV comparison makes sense.

Apologies for the misunderstanding!

Silicon-perovskite solar cells are cool, but A) this is not a new idea (many, many companies are doing this), B) this isn’t a world record, not even for 2-junction (I used to work at a company that made 30+% single junction GaAs cells), and 3) perovskites don’t have an efficiency issue… they have a stability issue.

This is cool, but please watch the language and accuracy because some of this is incorrect.

Different metric - solar energy efficiency means you’re capturing X% of solar radiation, which is both massive and free.

EV efficiency means you’re converting X% of input electricity to power. The input electricity comes from power plants, and is costly.

I always caution against comparing solar cell efficiency to other technologies.

FYI Solar cell efficiency hits theoretical limits around low-30% for single junction, maybe 50% or so for dual junction. World record is a 3-junction around 39% I think from the company Solar Junction.