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Electric car that charges itself

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Re: Electric car that charges itself

#231

Post by throwaw2934238 »

jiofih wrote: post #137
iso1631 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent a car that's delivered to a house reliably available at 8am each morning and 3pm every afternoon, with car seats, when everyone else is after a car at at least one of those times, half a mile from the nearest neighbour, 2 miles from the village, and 7 miles from the nearest town?

Sounds like an urban planning problem. I can find half a dozen car sharing vehicles in a 400m radius from my house.

Try again on a sunday afternoon on one of the first beautiful spring days, see how many cars you can find then. Zero around here

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#232

Post by gambiting »

mavhc wrote: post #144
rythie wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works, it's based on the date of the solar installation, not when the house was built.

But why didn't the owner install solar back then?

Uhm.....back when? In the UK out of the 9 houses I rented so far 8 were 80+ years old, and the last one was "only" 40 years old. Installation of solar panels on houses this old also presents some challenges, as most of them will have original roofs quickly approaching a full century. And if you need to replace the roof just to install some solar panels it quickly becomes an unprofitable idea.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#233

Post by mbreese »

agumonkey wrote: post #226
40four wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

He didn't mention the semi ? The large flat area, long time under the sun, difference of market (no need to integrate it pretty, a simple flatbed on top would do)

Semi trucks and trailers are two different components. Most trailers have a large flat area, but these can get swapped often. And even within the same company you won’t always have the solar trailer hooked up to the electric semi. The swappable nature of the load is part of the appeal of semis.

I guess what I’m saying is, even if you had a solar trailer, you would lose a lot of the load flexibility of using a semi truck. And you wouldn’t want to plan a load where you needed the solar power. So either way, you’re planning for charging at fixed intervals. Solar might help a little here, but not very much.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#234

Post by steego »

lmilcin wrote: post #200
crucio wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you care for your can you will not want to leave it in open sun for extended periods, especially when you live in lower latitudes where this car would have more sense. Stuff deteriorates in open sun and high temperature and this applies to batteries. If you are cash strappend and own an EV then the batteries are going to be your focus as keeping them alive for as long as possible is going to largely determine your…

> If you care for your can you will not want to leave it in open sun for extended periods, especially when you live in lower latitudes where this car would have more sense.

I purchased a car last year and have yet to put on 3,000 miles this year since I started working from home. (And I took a day trip with it).

I live in an apartment with a garage, but I use it for storage and don't mind parking my car outside. (I don't care about leaving my car in the sun and I live in a Southern state where it gets hot)

I'd consider buying something like this if it was a little more mature (Maybe in a future/cheaper Tesla model) simply because I love the idea of leaving my car out so it can stay charged.

We don't all think like you and your neighbors.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#235

Post by mbreese »

eldaisfish wrote: post #209
stonemetal12 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only plus I can see is that if you leave your car at the airport for a week or some other long term parking situation, you don't come back to a dead battery.

Many large airports and certainly the majority of airports in large metropolitan areas have underground or covered parking.

Most still have the large extended parking lots that are a bit further away. Those are always large outdoor lots, even at a place like SFO. These are more geared towards the longer term parking scenario the parent post referred to.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#236

Post by ben_w »

eldaisfish wrote: post #225
ben_w wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Neither cost nor plausibility are the key criticisms here. The key criticism is about usefulness. If you want useful solar output in cities and don't have space or desire for rooftop panels, a better starting spot is the roofs of bus shelters or even the buses themselves. Both are large enough to generate useful solar output and are already higher than the majority of cars. Also, what are "average" conditions? The we…

See page 12 of your link. Most of the cost in grid connected PV isn’t the cells; stuff like installation (e.g. safety while working at heights) is famously expensive. See pages 18-19 for their estimates.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#237

Post by lmilcin »

steego wrote: post #234
lmilcin wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you care for your can you will not want to leave it in open sun for extended periods, especially when you live in lower latitudes where this car would have more sense. Stuff deteriorates in open sun and high temperature and this applies to batteries. If you are cash strappend and own an EV then the batteries are going to be your focus as keeping them alive for as long as possible is going to largely determine your…

> If you care for your can you will not want to leave it in open sun for extended periods, especially when you live in lower latitudes where this car would have more sense. I purchased a car last year and have yet to put on 3,000 miles this year since I started working from home. (And I took a day trip with it). I live in an apartment with a garage, but I use it for storage and don't mind parking my car outside. (I d…

Couple of potential users does not yet form a valid business case.

Cars are expensive to develop. If you want to offer an affordable car you must have a lot of potential customers.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#238

Post by tppiotrowski »

samcheng wrote: post #170
gnramires wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm an electric car driver, and I'm still skeptical. 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...

With decent LTE coverage in national forest and BLM areas I could see people sitting in the desert for a week and then moving onto another location while they work remotely out of their van, though it’s pretty cheap to buy square 200W panels. I didn’t read about the efficiency of this technology.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#239

Post by eldaisfish »

ben_w wrote: post #236
eldaisfish wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither cost nor plausibility are the key criticisms here. The key criticism is about usefulness. If you want useful solar output in cities and don't have space or desire for rooftop panels, a better starting spot is the roofs of bus shelters or even the buses themselves. Both are large enough to generate useful solar output and are already higher than the majority of cars. Also, what are "average" conditions? The we…

See page 12 of your link. Most of the cost in grid connected PV isn’t the cells; stuff like installation (e.g. safety while working at heights) is famously expensive. See pages 18-19 for their estimates.

that's precisely my point. Even if most of the $2/W cost of commercial PV isn't the cell cost, the cells still cost around US$ 0.4 - 0.6 each and this is for mass produced cells.

Is it fair to claim that a speciality cell such as those on this car can be had for even cheaper? Unlikely.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#240

Post by cptskippy »

dmos62 wrote: post #195
gt565k wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could cover every residential building and parking lot's rooftop with solar panels and have charging stations for cars, and low cost electricity for the entire block, neighborhood, and city. This problem of "energy" in particular electricity, can be solved, but requires buy in from millions of different parties (HOAs, building owners, real estate developers). Unless the law changes where you can compel / force…

Question is whether the panels on the car's roof or on the building's roof can be installed cheaper, and how the installation+maintainance / energy output ratio compares.

Don't discount the fact that a car may not have direct sunlight where it's parked, particularly a city car with high buildings surrounding it. I could park a solar panel in my driveway and it wouldn't receive direct sunlight until about 1pm.

At 1pm my south facing rooftop solar array is at 97% of peak output, and by 2pm it's down to 82% and falls off pretty sharply after that. At some point in the afternoon the shadow cast from across the street would block that direct sunlight.

According to their specs, the car goes 255km on a 35kWh pack which is ~7.286km/Wh. It says it can produce up to 245km of range which is roughly 33.6kWh a week or 4.8kWh a day at best. In my case, it would be closer to half that value at best (2.4kWh), we've been having overcast days and my array has been outputting half it's normal capacity (1.2kWh). That's over 60km of range which would probably work for me but is 1 day's commute for a lot of people.

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