161–170 of 418 posts
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How many kilometres per week they take? 0.05 increase in drag coefficient can alone eat the energy equivalent of 50km in a week.
Why would you by-default assume that the people who design and implement this are unaware of such considerations?
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Why? Wires up and down building are nothing new. Your objection does not seem reasonable.
Running out over the pavement to the cars in the street? With infrastructure to handle the problem of residents not necessarily being able to park in front of the buildings they live in. It seems non trivial to me.
You seem sceptical? I've seen exactly that in a street near me, to a motor vehicle being charged up. They used a cable protector, this kind of device: https://www.kingfisherdirect.co.uk/traffic-line-hose-and-cab...
However, more permanent infrastructure would be buried below the paving. This already happens, BTW. Cities need infrastructure, that's just the fact of it. 21st century infrastructure will include fast internet and vehicle charging.
Any solar cell mounted on a roof of a car is going to be much more expensive and less efficient than a cell that can be mounted on a roof of a house.
Want to put a solar cell? Why not put it on your house instead? You can put as much of the cell as you can without the downsides of having it on your car. It will work for you even when you have your car parked in a garage.
With inclined roof the cell is going to be much more efficient than a car roof cell that has to be level.
Has anyone thought about parking the car in shade or garages? Now you have to park in a sunny place for a small increase in efficiency.
Here in eastern/northern Europe, the maximum values are normally unattainable throughout the year (at least here in Europe).
And no, the solar on a car is not going to prevent you from having to charge it, you still need to charge it, just a little less so it will not eliminate you having to have some place to charge it and fiddling with cables and chargers.
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For people using their cars once or twice a week to drive 10km to do groceries this will suit them and with having more housing estate with no basic amenities within walking distance this will defiantly fit families with a main car for work commute and second car for small trips like this while one parent is at work with fossil fueled car
> For people using their cars once or twice a week to drive 10km to do groceries this will suit them Wouldn't they be even better suited to a regular electric car, parked under a roof of solar panels? The simple flat solar roof will be cheaper to make, and be a larger useful surface. And easier to replace, will keep the weather off the car, reduces car weight, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many kilometres per week they take? 0.05 increase in drag coefficient can alone eat the energy equivalent of 50km in a week.
Why would you by-default assume that the people who design and implement this are unaware of such considerations?
A solar golf cart would be great for people in Arizona, but a car with a solar roof is meaningless almost anywhere and actually wasteful everywhere that doesn't have great sun.
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…
There are also flexible CIGS panels which are not fragile and conform well to curved surfaces and are incredibly light weight. I have 960W mounted on my short school bus conversion and am able to run fridge 24/7, water pump, lights, and an induction cook top and have yet to fully drain the two lithium batteries I got. If any community is aware of the advances made in consumer solar recently it's the skoolie/vanlife f…
As for the car, I imagine people will burn the energy and more by turning on the air conditioning when they get into their hot car that they intentionally parked in the sun.
Did you glue(/etc) the panels to the roof or did you have to mount them on standoffs?
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…
[1]https://electrek.co/2021/03/03/hyundai-ioniq-5-spotted-charg...
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
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…
Indeed, I were once skeptical (remembering EEVBlog's Solar Roadways series) but it really seems a good deal. Short commutes in cities can probably be covered. And a killer feature to me: if you ever get stranded somewhere without power, you at least have the option to wait a day or two to charge and get to somewhere nearby with power (around 3 miles/day for ioniq, 10 miles/day average for sion according to the articl…
It's hard to imagine a scenario where I accidentally run out of batteries and then can afford to wait for MULTIPLE DAYS before finishing my trip. Pretty sure I'd at least want to get a tow to the nearest gas station, where they would be able to plug me in if necessary. Even a plain old 120V 15A plug has much more power than solar, and works overnight...