I can also confirm the medium solar panels are quite touchy. I also found you can laser off your own solar panels via the ChemCam.

I've never had a wheel fail after an extended amount of driving. It's always started more or less immediately after landing. I'm wondering if the drop off the landing platform damages the wheels... The MER mission rovers had ramps on their landers for this reason =p

Making this a difficulty option would solve all problems. A big menu with lots of tickboxes for different aspects of the game as an advanced mode of selecting difficulty would be ideal.