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Electric car that charges itself

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Re: Electric car that charges itself

#271

Post by decker »

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.

Don't dense urban areas tend to have tall buildings that block the sunlight?

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#272

Post by orthecreedence »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #256
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…

A cheap, easy to set up solar car port in the driveway would make more sense for suburban dwellers. Guessing HOA's would lose their shit though.

> Guessing HOA's would lose their shit though.

Perhaps there should be legal escape hatches from HOA rules specifically for energy efficiency upgrades. I don't generally advocate for centralization of power (ie, a state imposing its will on a community), but in the case of climate change I'll happily make exceptions.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#273

Post by flavius29663 »

kamranjon wrote: post #145
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…

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…

> an induction cook top

You make it sound like you're using a lot of power in that bus, but an induction cook top is at most 2-3 KW. That is 4 horse power. If you want to crawl at 5 mph that might be enough (but not for a skoolie anyway).

Cars have a huge power-plant under the hood. 100kW per car, at least. All the cars in a city have far more power than the power plant that supplies the city. Think 10k cars (town)= 1 GW. That is a nuclear reactor...

All the cars in the US, 275 million vehicles, at an average of 100KW, have a combined power of 27.5 TW. The total installed electrical power plants in the US are around 0.5 TW. The whole world has only 6 TW of installed power plants.

Cars need a lot of power...

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#274

Post by baybal2 »

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.

The other 2 of 3 does benefit, but I wouldn't say they are much better other than not being an outright scam.

Anything other than stratospheric sales from first year means they end up being dinner for existing manufacturers in low to mid-end.

And if they don't beat Tesla in the high-end, means they are dinner for Tesla.

Not to say a lion share of money still goes to people with zero automotive experience, or just above that of golf cart makers.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#276

Post by cr3ative »

bin_bash wrote: post #210
mavhc wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No money for generating solar power? I get 20p/kwh

Does the owner pay electricity in the UK? In the US the tenant pays it directly.

Depends on the tenancy agreement, some are bills included, some are not.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#277

Post by dheera »

orthecreedence wrote: post #272
JKCalhoun wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cheap, easy to set up solar car port in the driveway would make more sense for suburban dwellers. Guessing HOA's would lose their shit though.

> Guessing HOA's would lose their shit though. Perhaps there should be legal escape hatches from HOA rules specifically for energy efficiency upgrades. I don't generally advocate for centralization of power (ie, a state imposing its will on a community), but in the case of climate change I'll happily make exceptions.

Honestly I don't see why we can't just outlaw HOAs. If you own something you should be able to do whatever you want with it. It seems like a simple constitutional right to me.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#278

Post by leoedin »

flavius29663 wrote: post #273
kamranjon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> an induction cook top You make it sound like you're using a lot of power in that bus, but an induction cook top is at most 2-3 KW. That is 4 horse power. If you want to crawl at 5 mph that might be enough (but not for a skoolie anyway). Cars have a huge power-plant under the hood. 100kW per car, at least. All the cars in a city have far more power than the power plant that supplies the city. Think 10k cars (town)=…

Cars need a lot of peak power. They don't use anywhere near that peak power during normal operation.

A typical electric car averages 4 miles per kWh. At a speed of 40 miles an hour that's an average power of 10kW - 10% of that 100kW peak power output.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#279

Post by rootusrootus »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #238
samcheng wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People definitely do this already, there's several forums dedicated to people who stuff their van or RV with batteries and cover the roof with solar panels so they can live off grid or go on extended boondocking trips.

If Starlink does remove the location restriction, I'll spend more time in the wilderness than I do at home.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#280

Post by crooked-v »

dheera wrote: post #277
orthecreedence wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guessing HOA's would lose their shit though. Perhaps there should be legal escape hatches from HOA rules specifically for energy efficiency upgrades. I don't generally advocate for centralization of power (ie, a state imposing its will on a community), but in the case of climate change I'll happily make exceptions.

Honestly I don't see why we can't just outlaw HOAs. If you own something you should be able to do whatever you want with it. It seems like a simple constitutional right to me.

Eliminate HOAs and you've destroyed the basic mechanism that makes common maintenance practical for high-density non-rental housing.
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