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Electric car that charges itself

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Re: Electric car that charges itself

#101

Post by throwaw2934238 »

majewsky wrote: post #87
throwaw2934238 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transport still doesn't cover all the use cases of a car, such as hauling things and going out into nature. Which is something everyone needs to do.

Correct. Therefore, the winning combination for city dwellers is public transit + carsharing. Public transit operators are catching on to this: In my city, there is a tie-in offer where a subscription to public transit gives you a rebate with a partnered carsharing provider.

Like I already wrote in another comment, I think car sharing absolutely does not work at all, because everyone wants the cars at the same time. It's really difficult to find a car when you want it, for example on a sunday afternoon when the weather is nice. And it's totally unreliable, sorry bad luck no swimming for you today, a whole beautiful day wasted in your apartment. It's almost impossible hard to find a scooter share to go to work during commute times. It's only reliable on odd times where noone wants it.

Owning a car still gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility to do what you want, when you want it. Which is not covered by car sharing at all.

I would gladly own a cheaper car only to do a weekly shopping trip and a weekly nature trip, something like 25km per week. Seems ridiculous to own a car for that short distances, but it gives a LOT of quality of life and I would gladly pay for it instead of using car sharing.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#102

Post by theshrike79 »

saagarjha wrote: post #88

Amusingly, the 2011 Nissan Leaf actually had a solar panel on its roof. It would help charge its internal battery–not the main one, but the 12V auxiliary battery. Trying to actually power the car itself is generally infeasible with solar panels attached to the car.

The Prius had this as an option too. As did some premium level Audis back in the day.

Basically they were mostly used to run the internal fans if the inside temp was higher than outside. I think the PHEV Prius was able to charge a separate battery with solar if AC wasn't needed.

It was a handy option, not essential, but a slight comfort on hot days.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#103

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#105

Post by rythie »

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.

This assumes that you - own your house (30% rent in Europe [1]) - That you can charge at home (14% live in flats in UK for example [2]), many other properties don't have parking attached too and even for those with allocated parking, connecting a charger is prohibitively difficult (digging up roads / getting consent etc.)

Governments will likely be slow to implement on street charging. There is a market for something like this, if it works as well as they say - which I doubt.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [2] https://www.mortgagefinancegazette.com/market-news/housing/t...

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#106

Post by leoedin »

It's easy to dismiss this as green washing, but there is some value to it for city cars. The amount of electricity generated is never going to be enough to fully power the car, but that's not really the point. If having solar panels on your car roof means you can avoid charging much in summer, that will make owning an electric car for people who live in cities much simpler - and so support adoption.

As a back of the envelope calculation, if you covered the ~2.44 m2 roof of a VW ID3 with solar panels you'd probably see somewhere in the region of 244 kWh / year (based on typical UK solar panel generation per year - this would be more in a sunny place). At 4.3 miles/kWh that gives you just over 1000 miles / year of self charged driving.

It's true that those same solar panels would be more productive in a static installation. But it's also the case in the west that the biggest cost to solar rollout is installation, not the panels themselves. Putting panels on the roof of a car can be done in a factory, with none of the tricky site-specific work that makes costs balloon.

In fact, Hyundai are already planning a solar roof option with their Ioniq 5 (https://interestingengineering.com/hyundai-unveils-charger-o...). It will be interesting to see if that has any impact for the typical driver.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#107

Post by mavhc »

swilliamsio wrote: post #55
mavhc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those cars shouldn't exist at all though, massive waste of resources, renting cars should be much much simpler and cheaper

Surely public transportation options are infinitely more preferable than people repeatedly renting cars?

Once you have JIT public transport then there's no difference really

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#108

Post by hexa00 »

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.

These places also tend to have underground parking :(

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#109

Post by namibj »

rcxdude wrote: post #96

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 exterio…

Solar cells, if thinned down, are flexible enough to confirm to most areas of a typical car.

They weigh no more than two kg per square meter including some environmental protection.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#110

Post by mavhc »

rythie wrote: post #105
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.

This assumes that you - own your house (30% rent in Europe [1]) - That you can charge at home (14% live in flats in UK for example [2]), many other properties don't have parking attached too and even for those with allocated parking, connecting a charger is prohibitively difficult (digging up roads / getting consent etc.) Governments will likely be slow to implement on street charging. There is a market for something…

Why hasn't the owner of the house put solar panels up? They own a house, by definition they're into long term investing
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