Do Drones Make Helicopters Obsolete?

Based on your description, the story you're likely thinking of is Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. The scenario you describe is a key element of the book's early colonization efforts. The colonists use electric vehicles and helicopters for exploration on Mars, and they power them by deploying vast, flexible sheets of thin-film solar cells. They would spread these out on the Martian plains to recharge their equipment, a process that was essential for their survival and mobility. Your observation that "This does not sound Scifi at all now" is spot-on. Red Mars, published in 1992, was a pioneering work of "hard science fiction" that focused on plausible, realistic future technologies. At the time, thin-film solar panels and advanced electric helicopters were speculative concepts. However, with the development of real-world technology like the flexible solar panels used on the International Space Station and the success of NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, the line between Robinson's fiction and our reality has become much blurrier.

-- Gemini