Not convinced by this car. But as a general idea a little free air conditioning when parked could be very handy for many. Trickle charging the battery probably extends the life of an electric car and prevents long term problems of neglect
Electric car that charges itself
211–220 of 418 posts
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
why not both
Weight, complexity, cost, lack of freedom of paint color/wrap, and complexity/time/cost of repairs after minor collisions??
Per the Aptera guys, the weight, cost, and complexity add isn’t much steeper than just the average cost of custom paint. As others have said, a central pain point of solar is installation specific and this ameliorates those problems. Heck, imagine if every apartment complex had a fleet of solar covered cars in its parking lot? Or every open air parking lot for that matter. At scale, it would add up.
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#213Not convinced by this car. But as a general idea a little free air conditioning when parked could be very handy for many. Trickle charging the battery probably extends the life of an electric car and prevents long term problems of neglect
It’s at least worth it for the AC of the interior and battery.
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 expensiv…
> I see one use case: leaving the car for extended periods of time unplugged, say at an airport parking lot. You're making a big assumption there - that the parking lot is open to the sky which many airport parking lots are not.
My experience is that most airports use the roof of the parking lot as well, so there's definitely at least one floor's worth of uncovered space.
I don't know of any airport that has 100% covered/underground parking spaces.
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#215This 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.
For a site devoted to people who love technology this is short sighted thinking. People thought the iPhone was a gimmick too that would never sell. You are looking at a development model of an idea: what happen 10 years down the road when solar technology improves like everything else and becomes light and more efficient. People thought Tesla would never work as well when it started. People thought Ford would never succeed either.
New technology is always a crapshoot, some pay off, some don't; but without a long term view we would still be driving a horse and buggy.
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#216i think people are underestimating how much energy is required for transportation and how little energy solar panels generate (relatively speaking). A Tesla is about 60 kWh on the low side for 300ish miles. The average American uses 30 kWh for house consumption. Let's say this car is super small, has a super efficient battery pack, and a logic defying solar panel, this car itself CAN SINGLE HANDED power your house. Forget about making cars. I want this shit on my house with these numbers.
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weight, complexity, cost, lack of freedom of paint color/wrap, and complexity/time/cost of repairs after minor collisions??
Per the Aptera guys, the weight, cost, and complexity add isn’t much steeper than just the average cost of custom paint. As others have said, a central pain point of solar is installation specific and this ameliorates those problems. Heck, imagine if every apartment complex had a fleet of solar covered cars in its parking lot? Or every open air parking lot for that matter. At scale, it would add up.
Not much more expensive than custom paint isn't all that compelling in terms of economics. (Porsche's paint-to-sample program is $7K extra the last time I looked. And that's an automaker's non-standard color only, not fully custom paint.)
How many cars are custom painted today? Very few because of the high cost. Vinyl wrap has largely displaced custom painting, even in motorsports (which is not a particularly budget sensitive endeavor).
If the solar tech here costs consumers only what the Porsche PTS program costs, that would be the equivalent of around 35MWh of electricity generation to break-even (at a generous $0.20/kWh). That 35MWh is equivalent to around 140K miles of range that would need to be added to break-even. Sono Motors site suggests that 70 miles per week can be added. On a cash basis (without discounting), that's 2000 weeks or 38.5 years. If your local electricity is $0.10/kWh, the payback period is longer than your entire driving lifespan. If you discount the future at just 3%, it literally loses money every year.
This tech is cool, but fails to be practical IMO.
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
I can't even get them to install an EV-Charger in there... even on my own cost.
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#219It'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…
this is nothing but BS. There's so much BS that it's hard to know where to begin. The PV panel power output per square meter is a good place to begin. It's telling that they aren't comparing to standard, off the shelf PV panels which put out over 200 W/m2 as standard. Higher values are commonplace these days. And mind you, that figure of 200 W/m2 is at peak power levels which occur infrequently, often only an hour or…
Shade is certainly a consideration, especially given people normally prefer to park their cars in shade to avoid them being unpleasantly hot when they return.
Cost, however, isn’t. The cells themselves are extremely cheap compared with the cost of putting them on a rooftop (in the case of homes), and in this case replaces the use of paint on the bodywork.
Specifically, the cost of cells is now down to ~$0.30/W, so 5 m^2 [0] of 200 W/m^2 would cost about $300. Similar arguments exist for PV roofing tiles being replacements for ceramic etc. tiles rather than the common sight of bulky window-size sheets attached after construction.
The claimed average range boost of 112 km/week (~3600 miles per year) in “average” conditions, and ~7900 miles per year in optimal conditions, definitely sounds about right to me based both on discussions last time a completely different PV consumer car was discussed here and on my BOTE calculations. Is that range worth $300 extra on the purchase price? Perhaps; it would pay for itself after ~1.88 years.
Doesn’t guarantee this isn’t vapourware (thinking of recent news about Nikola Corporation), but it is at least plausible.
[0] I am guesstimating the area
Re: Electric car that charges itself
#220It'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…
This topic came up on the recent Joe Rogan with Elon Musk. Elon said they considered it, but in the end it is just not worth it. He said there is just not enough surface area on a car to contribute a worthwhile amount of electricity.
The numbers quoted for this particular vehicle are very optimistic I think. If you’re lucky, you might get 5 miles a day out of it. What happens if it’s cloudy or rainy for a week? Or you park in a garage? There are so many variables, and the return on investment will be highly variable.
Tesla decided it’s just not worth the extra cost and complexity, for such a small return. I agree the idea sounds nice, but I’m afraid these companies that are doing are this, are mostly just getting a nice PR boost.
There is just no way around the technical limitations of solar panels in the amount of energy they can convert, and the surface area of a car. Vans or RVs that could fold out a larger array when parked might be another story.
I will say, it looks like they have some real innovations in the design and engineering of integrating the panels in the body. Looks pretty cool, so that’s not nothing:)