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Electric car that charges itself

sonomotors.com

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Re: Electric car that charges itself

#171

Post by Rule35 »

cookiengineer wrote: post #146

A bit of backstory of the company: Initially they were founded in 2016. The founders built their prototype by-hand and themselves, which I find very inspiring. In 2019 they had to do a crowdfunding campaign to raise 50M EUR for research costs so that they can go to mass market production. They had ~13000 signups in that campaign. Before that, most investors wanted a too revenue-focussed investment, and the company wa…

> it's first-gen and that it will have a few bugs and quirks, we all know that.

That's not the general complaint. Most people don't think it will ever pay off the cost of the panel/electronics/waste, let alone offer any tangible benefit. It's not the sort of think you can iterate on, the roof is just only so big and the car uses a certain amount of power, neither of which they can usefully change.

> crowdfunding campaign to raise 50M EUR for research costs so that they can go to mass market production. They had ~13000 signups in that campaign.

Yeah, crowdfunding, where you go to find scientifically and financially "unsophisticated" investors. Solar roadways do really well with this crowd.

> Before that, most investors wanted a too revenue-focussed investment, and the company wanted to build an affordable mass-market car.

Well, yeah. If I give you money to make a product I want that product to be useful enough to sell for a profit.

They should put their time into developing the easy-conforming solar panels and let people put them in actually useful places. (And perhaps someone would have an efficient car and could stick the panel on it, but then they'd know how little power they were going to get and be happy with it, as opposed to your typical greenwashed consumer scammed into "helping" the environment.)

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#172

Post by natch »

GrinningFool wrote: post #147
baybal2 wrote: post #138

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?

Vaporware is a thing. As is clickbait. Also false marketing. The engineers don’t always control the marketing.

Maybe the commenter you replied to is simply not gullible.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#173

Post by baybal2 »

kamranjon wrote: post #143
baybal2 wrote: post #138

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.

I suspect you still haven't clicked on the link?

I did, I read their very optimistic estimates, and I still believe it being near useless with 250km a week.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#174

Post by Tade0 »

lmilcin wrote: post #163

I call BS. 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 goin…

I see one use case: leaving the car for extended periods of time unplugged, say at an airport parking lot.

Last year I had to leave my car unused for three months, after which both the 12V battery and the hybrid battery were completely discharged.

Had there been a solar panel on the roof this wouldn't be an issue.

Nowadays most of the cost of solar is installation, so I don't think such a panel would be very expensive.

The 860W panel on the Prius Plug-In is a €2000 option, so it's around twice the price of a rooftop installation, but they're using 34% efficient, monocrystalline cells, so most of the expense comes from that.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#175

Post by jquery »

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…

Did you click the link?

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#176

Post by Rule35 »

mrfredward wrote: post #118
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're forgetting many people live in apartments in dense urban areas How much sunlight do they get in parking garages?

Demand that your landlords install sunlamps in the parking garage. Solved.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#177

Post by Rule35 »

totalZero wrote: post #111
baybal2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The other 2 of 3 benefit from the torrential inflows of capital, and if one of them produces some clever engineering then perhaps it's a net win overall for society.

On the other hand, if a bunch of ... less than engineering experts ... run to try to copy Tesla (which is working on a whole other level making custom alloys, etc) they're just going to waste a bunch of money and ruin investor's trust in the market for better ideas.

Far better to pick the thing you actually add and do just that. For these people, maybe it's the nicely conformal panel.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#178

Post by crucio »

lmilcin wrote: post #163

I call BS. 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 goin…

You seem to think everyone lives the same life as you.

Many people don't have a roof, or don't have permission to put solar on them.

Many people drive very little per day on average, for them in makes absolute sense to have a vehicle which will trickle charge directly from the sun and cover most (if not all) their driving.

This car obviously isn't for you if you have a suitable roof and driveway, and drive many miles at one time.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#179

Post by throwaw2934238 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #98
nickez wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People who live in big cities and ride crowded public transport every day to work, do not want to spend their free time on the weekend riding crowded public transport in the city.

The cars are used to get away from crowds and from the city, to have some privacy and comfort and go out into nature.

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