Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Electric car that charges itself

sonomotors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 418 posts

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#91

Post by zksmk »

Geee wrote: post #78

It makes very little sense to be lugging solar panels around. It's just not worth it. Install them at home and charge. It might make sense if your vehicle is large and mostly stationary in remote locations where electricity is not available. Anyway, I think this product is fake and scam.

You're forgetting many people live in apartments in dense urban areas, and basically the only place they CAN put solar panels IS on the top of their car. Of course, they could just buy/use electricity produced elsewhere in dedicated solar farms, but that doesn't make you self-reliant, and could in theory cost the end user more money, depending on maintenance and cost of the vehicle.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#93

Post by baybal2 »

Geee wrote: post #78

It makes very little sense to be lugging solar panels around. It's just not worth it. Install them at home and charge. It might make sense if your vehicle is large and mostly stationary in remote locations where electricity is not available. Anyway, I think this product is fake and scam.

> Anyway, I think this product is fake and scam.

Indeed.

I feel it is now like 1 in 3 EV projects as of late is a pure scam driven by stratospheric Tesla valuation.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#94

Post by nickez »

extropy wrote: post #75
jillesvangurp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of cars don't drive much more than this per week and just sit outside on the drive way or parking lot. They are only used for short trips to work or shops. Solar charging ensures you only rarely have to plug it in to top it up, which is convenient. It also means that if you leave it sitting outside for long periods of time, it will be topped up rather than slightly drained when you get back to it. That convenien…

In this case it's way cheaper to put those panels on your house. No weight or vibration requirements, can use the electricity for your house too. The only downside is you need to plug in.

What if you live in an apartment and only use your car for weekend activities?

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#95

Post by csunbird »

zksmk wrote: post #91
Geee wrote: post #78

It makes very little sense to be lugging solar panels around. It's just not worth it. Install them at home and charge. It might make sense if your vehicle is large and mostly stationary in remote locations where electricity is not available. Anyway, I think this product is fake and scam.

You're forgetting many people live in apartments in dense urban areas, and basically the only place they CAN put solar panels IS on the top of their car. Of course, they could just buy/use electricity produced elsewhere in dedicated solar farms, but that doesn't make you self-reliant, and could in theory cost the end user more money, depending on maintenance and cost of the vehicle.

You can not get good sunlight at dense places anyways. Almost always there is going to be a shadow.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#96

Post by rcxdude »

Having worked on a solar car as a student project, solar panels on a car are at best a marketing gimmick. There's definitely not enough area on a car to power a car anyone wants to drive, even under ideal conditions at a reasonable duty cycle, and issues of shading are even worse for a car than a stationary panel. Also solar panels are fragile and encapsulating them so that they are robust enough to be on the exterior of a car costs substantial weight. Putting solar panels on the car is only slightly better than putting them on the road surface.

If the car is decent as a plug-in electric car, then it still may be worth getting. If the solar panels are sufficiently non-intrusive they may even be close to neutral in terms of the utility of the car, but they do not improve it.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#97

Post by xmdx »

Geee wrote: post #78

It makes very little sense to be lugging solar panels around. It's just not worth it. Install them at home and charge. It might make sense if your vehicle is large and mostly stationary in remote locations where electricity is not available. Anyway, I think this product is fake and scam.

Don't think it's fake, been in development for a while, here's a review of the car from 2 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLZKdkgB85k

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#98

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

nickez wrote: post #94
extropy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case it's way cheaper to put those panels on your house. No weight or vibration requirements, can use the electricity for your house too. The only downside is you need to plug in.

What if you live in an apartment and only use your car for weekend activities?

> What if you live in an apartment and only use your car for weekend activities?

Then you probably live in a city and would be better served by transport modes where you don't need a big upfront cost, and other expenses and hassle of owning your own vehicle. I mean bus, tram, metro rail, taxi, uber.

You can always qualify with further "what if you..." to find someone who matches this case. But by the time you're done it won't be a viable number of customers.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#99

Post by zksmk »

csunbird wrote: post #95
zksmk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting many people live in apartments in dense urban areas, and basically the only place they CAN put solar panels IS on the top of their car. Of course, they could just buy/use electricity produced elsewhere in dedicated solar farms, but that doesn't make you self-reliant, and could in theory cost the end user more money, depending on maintenance and cost of the vehicle.

You can not get good sunlight at dense places anyways. Almost always there is going to be a shadow.

Undoubtedly for some cases, but I'm talking from my perspective of "commie-blocks” with large open green spaces between the towers. Sure you could in theory put the panels in those open green public spaces but that's neither legal nor would it jibe well with their whole raison d'etre.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#100

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

throwaw2934238 wrote: post #80
jillesvangurp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of cars don't drive much more than this per week and just sit outside on the drive way or parking lot. They are only used for short trips to work or shops. Solar charging ensures you only rarely have to plug it in to top it up, which is convenient. It also means that if you leave it sitting outside for long periods of time, it will be topped up rather than slightly drained when you get back to it. That convenien…

I also think these cars would be great, and have a lot of peoples needs covered, me for example. I don't understand this sentiment in the debate of electric cars, how all of them need to cover the most extreme edge case of long mileage users, and if they don't, the whole idea should be scrapped. Why? Let's build a few different cars with different ranges to suit peoples different needs, what's the problem with that,…

> I don't understand why there is such a black and white reasoning around this.

There is black-and white reasoning about this because the maths around "what is the surface area of the car, how much charge can it generate and how far can it go on that charge" is also black-and white. And not favourable.

As the other reply says, this is not "the debate of electric cars"; this is the debate about this specific electric car design, with the solar panels on the car.

Post reply on HN