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Electric car that charges itself

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Re: Electric car that charges itself

#281

Post by iso1631 »

40four wrote: post #220
leoedin wrote: post #106

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…

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…

Musk is building cars for a mainly american style market - long drives and private parking.

topping up 5 miles a day means that a full battery will last me and the 1.8 million UK cars that do under 2000 miles a year, months between having to plug in and recharge.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#282

Post by recursive »

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.

As the vice president of my HOA (for a few more months) I'm happy to report that I've never heard of a request for solar installation that wasn't approved on the first request.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#283

Post by rlpb »

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.

> If you own something you should be able to do whatever you want with it. It seems like a simple constitutional right to me.

However, if a group of people want to make a legally enforceable agreement between themselves for their mutual benefit, then it shouldn't be possible for one of them to renege on that agreement later.

See also: easements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement). You can own property but if an easement exists then you can't do whatever you want with it. If easements were suddenly unenforceable, chaos would ensue. So the matter is certainly not as simple as "if you own something you should be able to do whatever you want with it".

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#284

Post by srg0 »

mastax wrote: post #222

Based on the comments here this tech is for people who: - don't drive very much - but drive enough to spend tens of thousands on a new car - but can't put a charger at their residence - but can park somewhere that isn't shaded by trees or buildings or clouds or snow Still, as the overall market for electric cars grows that can add up to millions of people. There's also another larger group: - People who don't choose…

In many EU countries

- Annual driving distance of petrol vehicles is 10000 km/year or less (250 km or ~155 miles per work week) [source: ACEA_Report_Vehicles_in_use-Europe_2017]. Extending this range by 112 km/week on average is not a bad proposition, if it's real.

- Average TCO in the first 5 years is over EUR 40_000 anyway [source: www.leaseplan.com/corporate/news-and-media/newsroom/2020/30-09-2020]. So most people who can afford a new car, can afford this one.

- The price tag EUR 25_500 is fair. VW Golf 8 is a vehicle of a similar size, and it starts at EUR 26_100, so it's basically the same.

- In the cities, street parking is often the only option, and most industrial areas use open parking; so getting some sunlight is not impossible.

So this tech is not more expensive than conventional vehicles (at least on paper). It can potentially reduce charging needs by 40% or more for a typical European user (who admittedly doesn't drive much). It's not very attractive without a network of easily accessible charging stations, but that applies to all EVs.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#285

Post by rootusrootus »

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…

> flexible CIGS panels which are not fragile

However, they do degrade noticeably over the space of even a couple years.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#286

Post by dheera »

crooked-v wrote: post #280
dheera wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to me HOAs aren't mostly about maintainence, they're mostly about old farts yelling at you for installing a fence or planting the wrong type of flower or using the wrong color of paint.

None of that stuff affects maintainence. Those farts shouldn't even be allowed to step on land they don't own.

The stuff that actually affects maintainence, I can understand, but participation should be optional by law. If you want discount maintainence, don't mess with your water pipes and electrical conduits. But hey if you're okay with finding your own maintainence, you should be entitled to do whatever you want as long as it's legal per fire/building code.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#287

Post by alexisread »

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)=…

While you have a point, I'd suggest a solar car is feasible if it is designed lighter ie. an electric bike puts out 250W which is enough to take a rider to 15mph. Something like the Citroen Ami (or electric TukTuk, or any of the small chinese EVs) which weighs 450kg is a halfway house between Teslas and bikes.

The Ami can charge off 13A 240V in 3 hours (6kW motor and 5.5kWh battery pack), and is useful for a number of duties eg. school runs, shopping, mobility, bad weather.

Obviously the car featured here isn't designed around light weightpractical charging but I reckon you could make an ultralight design for 4/5 people. The other problem is other larger cars on the road, that's a separate debate from the technical one.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#288

Post by jandrese »

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.

HoAs are how neighborhoods fund communal property like pools, parks, plowing of parking lots, etc...

Where you get into trouble is when they also try to enforce "property value" guidelines, which tend to become "against whatever the most power tripping person on the council thinks is 'ugly'". Solar panels are exactly the sort of thing that can be considered "ugly" and end up being banned. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#289

Post by dheera »

recursive wrote: post #282
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.

As the vice president of my HOA (for a few more months) I'm happy to report that I've never heard of a request for solar installation that wasn't approved on the first request.

This is the kind of thing that makes my blood boil. Why is this even an approval? Why do you think you have ANY say over their solar installation? Why does it even have to go through an approval process for anything other than fire/electrical/building safety?

It's not your property. Stay out.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#290

Post by vidarh »

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.

There is literally no place in the world where you can do "whatever you want" with property, for the simple reason that allowing you to do so would dramatically affect your neighbours in ways that would substantially restrict how they can use their property.

It's a fair argument that conversely many types of restrictions on what you can do are unjustified and overly broad, but arguing from the basis that you should be able to do as you please will fall flat on its face because it is so easy to find examples that would massively negatively affect neighbours.

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