Comment by standeven
8 hours ago
This is like building a gas powered car with a refinery attached to the roof.
Batteries exist. Solar panels add weight and design constraints. Why is this a thing? What am I missing?
8 hours ago
This is like building a gas powered car with a refinery attached to the roof.
Batteries exist. Solar panels add weight and design constraints. Why is this a thing? What am I missing?
This is clearly not a winning idea if you're a spreadsheet-loving engineer that can run the numbers, and is interested enough in clean tech to do so. But that's 5% of the population, tops.
To the 95% of people without the inclination or knowledge to check the figures, this looks great! It's a car with zero fuel costs, it's EV charging for people who don't have off-street parking, it's a fix for EVs sitting in workplace car parks at times of peak solar output, and it's most of the benefits of covering car parks in solar panels.
Solar panel efficiency has increased and they have made an extremely slippery vehicle. 4kWh/day and 10 miles per kWh gives 40 miles per day of driving range, enough for many people without ever plugging in.
> 4kWh/day
That's over-optimistic and you will probably only get that in a small handful of places in the world like the southwestern US or the Middle East and even then only for part of the year.
The hot, sunny, never-cloudy parts of the world also tend to be the ones where driving long distances is most necessary.
From some parts of SF to SJ is about 42 miles. Thats a very long distance that you’re likely to get completely on solar. For that long of a commute you probably need a bigger battery but you could easily have most of your costs met for free with minimal top ups. And that’s a very long daily commute.
Also temperature doesn’t matter too much. You just need sun. I bet it’s enough for most of California year round with minor exceptions that you need to use infrastructure charging.
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Solar panel efficiency hasn’t gone up that much. It’s not like solar panel cars were just barely not worth it - the economics weren’t close to making sense.
10 miles/kWh is also insanely efficient, unbelievably so (well over 2x your average EV), and I don’t see where they back that claim up.
You’re missing that many people do not live in single-family homes with easy plug-in charging. Especially in big cities.
That’s one reason electric cars are a bit of a luxury item right now.
Charging is easy in dense cities. The problem is more that property managers are reluctant to get with the beat. Some legal intervention might be needed (e.g. make it a legal requirement to have at least 1/3 the amount of chargers as residents, in preparation for an electric car future) and let the unwilling property managers shut down.