131–140 of 172 posts
They are claiming up to 27.7mi per day left in the sun. If true, my 5mi commute each way would be possible without ever charging the vehicle in the summer... That being s said, curious how this holds up to weather (hail, snow, etc) and whether those numbers are accurate.
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That's for a belt-driven A/C, tied directly to the engine RPM. They're inherently much less efficient because they have to work over a wide range of speeds. A motor-driven A/C will be 1-2 kW. That's also the peak power, and a motorized A/C will instead be turned on and off leading to a much lower power draw that also depends less on the peak power. Typically a 50-30% duty cycle, so 200-300 watts very roughly. More de…
And if instead of getting into a sweltering 330K car, if 300W was enough power to cool it to a reasonable 300K, that's still a win. Happy to start car to cool it down to a comfier 295K.
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I wonder if you can expand on why you think it will take decades to build out the charging infrastructure. I've seen it suggested that technology adoption S curves have been getting faster and faster over the last hundred years. The power grid exists everywhere you'd want to charge a car already. It seems a petty simple job to go the last hundred feet to the parking space. My perception was that the liming factor is…
The moment you consider apartments, it does not. There are few if any apartments to get where you can charge your car. This is an area many overlook, but if you don't own a home, you might not have a good place to charge. This does not fit when the big mantra around EVs has been "charge at home!" instead of "fueling up" at a station. Even now, the DC charge stations aside from Tesla are not fast enough.
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You mean DRL's? They lead to a significant reduction in crash rate - and since much of a car's carbon impact is tied up in the manufacturing of the car, that is likely a far greater impact than running the DRL's all day. Plus, with LED DRL's becoming more common, the power drain is much less significant than the old incandescent lights. My old car ran the 55W headlights at around 40W each for DRL's. My new car has a…
How'd you figure out the draw from your various headlights? Bulb specs?
After the first measurement I thought I proved that the wiring was seriously undervolting the headlights when I only measured around 10V (and just under 40W), then I realized that was the DRL's.
To find the 3W spec for the LED DRLs on my current car, I just looked up the specs on an replacement module - I don't crawl around the hood with a multimeter anymore, too much expensive stuff in the way.
(the reason I measured in the first place was because I wanted brighter headlights since I was doing a lot of night driving in mountain roads, and thought that replacing the wiring harness would be an easy upgrade. I ended up adding a set of driving lights which looked kind of dorky, but worked great)
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Hybrids are the future for most of the market worldwide. It will take decades to build out the charging infrastructure necessary to support battery electric vehicles. Some industrialized countries will move faster.
I wonder if you can expand on why you think it will take decades to build out the charging infrastructure. I've seen it suggested that technology adoption S curves have been getting faster and faster over the last hundred years. The power grid exists everywhere you'd want to charge a car already. It seems a petty simple job to go the last hundred feet to the parking space. My perception was that the liming factor is…
This is like any other concept car. It's a cool concept but won't make it to production. The commercial viability of this is far off. 34% solar is prohibitively expensive. You won't see these on cars until costs come down significantly.
One thing that has changed is the structural value of the roof of a car. In the olden days the roof was a vital part of the safety cell. Now it is not quite the same. The A-pillar has been toughened up and the engineering for the roof is different, hence the all-glass affair on the Tesla Model 3 and other marques.
Elon Musk said there was no point in having solar panels on the car and that those would be best kept roadside for generating power that goes into the grid.
He was right.
But you are not going to persuade your supermarket to cover their entire parking lot with solar cells so your car can park in the cool shade underneath them whilst getting free power.
If solar cells can be as good as printed and be an integral plart of a car in the place of steel, paint, glass or carbon-fibre then they don't have to make commercial sense in the rational way that Elon Musk outlines. When I get my EV campervan in 2025 I hope the roof is festooned with solar panels that are not some bolt on but integrated into the design. If I am parked up somewhere and they give me enough power to make myself a cup of tea and power my laptop then I would be happy with that. If they were a $5K option then they would also be a $3K add-on to the resale value of the campervan. If I kept the van for ten years then $200 a year for that month of use I get out of the van might be more expensive than supercharging the EV for pennies but I would still just like having such a space age feature.
Nothing really makes sense with autos. There isn't such a thing as a stripped down utilitarian auto. It is all a matter of degree. Some people pay for carbon-fibre cup holders. Or fake carbon fibre hood scoops. Or extra titanium bits for the exhaust. Or, perhaps more relevant, a cabriolet top that retracts at the touch of a button at speeds up to 25 mph. If that makes sense to people - and it does - then solar cells on the bonnet and roof can easily be foisted onto the marketplace.
I live in a pretty hot city (My car's outside thermometer showed 48°C yesterday at midday). The extended range is nice and all, but if somebody makes a car that can run the AC without running/draining the battery while it's parked, even if it's just a little to keep the car interior at 35°C or so, I would, without exaggeration, buy it the day it's released here. Hell, I'd consider it even if it would just keep the fa…
I live in a pretty hot city (My car's outside thermometer showed 48°C yesterday at midday). The extended range is nice and all, but if somebody makes a car that can run the AC without running/draining the battery while it's parked, even if it's just a little to keep the car interior at 35°C or so, I would, without exaggeration, buy it the day it's released here. Hell, I'd consider it even if it would just keep the fa…
> The extended range is nice and all, but if somebody makes a car that can run the AC without running/draining the battery while it's parked, even if it's just a little to keep the car interior at 35°C or so, I would, without exaggeration, buy it the day it's released here. Tesla's dog mode does this. Draining the battery isn't really something to worry about; AC uses <300 watts over long periods (turns on and off at…
Dog mode is the main thing keeping me from trading in my Tesla for something else.
Who wrote this? "This demo car’s prototype cells can convert solar energy at 34% and up" 34% what? "Using a redesigned solar battery cell film that measures only 0.03 mm" 0.03mm wide? Long? And what's a solar battery cell film???
The efficiency percentage on a solar panel refers to the amount of radiated energy from sunlight that can be converted into electricity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency Less sure about the 0.03mm but I'm guessing the relevant metric would be thickness or depth.
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In theory, the solar roof should absorb ~30% of the rays a cars is exposed to, so it won't heat up as much. Not sure if the effect would be significant, though.
It would help but the glass windows (greenhouse effect) are probably a bigger factor.