11–20 of 418 posts
This may be a stupid question but given that these cars literally absorb light... do they pose a danger on the roads in terms of visibility to other motorists?
Nevertheless very black materials can be stunningly dark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack
“The polymer coatings of our cells do not splinter” but I bet the cells themselves sure as hell do. Cracks are hard to spot and can render an entire series string of cells useless. Top side body panels I wouldn’t be so worried about, but the doors... really?
[1] https://us.sunpower.com/sites/default/files/sp-gen2-solar-ce...
This idea will never be practical but it also seems it won't die. 69 miles per week of charging. Assuming the car is sitting outdoors all week and the weather is not cloudy. A Tesla can charge more than this in an hour.
I’m pretty sure this car can be plugged in too. In fact it has bidirectional charging, so a parking lot of these things could (theoretically) be connected into a huge solar system charging all the cars
For the poor efficiency of solar panels, seems like a big gimmick to try to differentiate and spend a ton of R&D on (solar body panels). I'd find it more interesting if you could just plug it directly into a solar array.
For the poor efficiency of solar panels, seems like a big gimmick to try to differentiate and spend a ton of R&D on (solar body panels). I'd find it more interesting if you could just plug it directly into a solar array.
An example of something that doesn't work well. Saw a guy that installed a heat pump water heater in his off grid house. In heat pump only mode it drew 500W. Problem he had to work around was it on startup it would flip on it's resistive heaters for a couple of seconds. Which would crowbar his inverter. And if he disconnected them it would throw a fault. A slight design change would make it work seamlessly.
This may be a stupid question but given that these cars literally absorb light... do they pose a danger on the roads in terms of visibility to other motorists?
This idea will never be practical but it also seems it won't die. 69 miles per week of charging. Assuming the car is sitting outdoors all week and the weather is not cloudy. A Tesla can charge more than this in an hour.
First to get to market but certainly not the only player in the solar-powered self-charging production car space. There's enough of them that there's a Wikipedia page - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_car
Aptera and Lightyear both have earlier projected delivery dates so even if we are saying "stock consumer car, off the lot, no after market" they're still wrong
People who know better are like "no it's not" and people who don't will spread it and be told they're wrong.
Solar charging solves the fueling problem for commuters in sunny environments, the narrative is compelling enough, no need to so prominently lie.
Besides people already don't really trust these boutique car manufacturers with unproven safety track records. It's a terrible first impression
This may be a stupid question but given that these cars literally absorb light... do they pose a danger on the roads in terms of visibility to other motorists?
The main issue is the extra cost of this worth the 16km (10miles) in range added per day. It produces $1/day in electricity, so it needs to cost less than $2.5k for it to be cheaper than electricity.
This is highly dependent on what you pay in electricity (system produces 33kw/week on average).