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Electric car that charges itself

sonomotors.com

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Re: Electric car that charges itself

#241

Post by throwaw2934238 »

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…

Yes that would be me! I would spend the money just to get a few extra hours of free time per week, that I save from not riding public transport, and being able to make fewer shopping trips, for the guarantee of being able to get into nature and where I want to go on the weekends.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#242

Post by 40four »

coding123 wrote: post #223
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…

The 8 hours it's parked at work will likely charge the 20 mile round-trip. For some people it will literally never need to be charged or serviced. For other types, like me, I drive about 4 hours a week over 2 trips, but the rest of the time it would just sit at home, probably charging at least half of that drive time. So I would need to plug it in. That being said I'm planning out a 12Kw+ solar for home anyway.

I’m almost certain 20 miles range gained in 8 hours is not realistic. The website claims the average for this car is 112km (69.6 mi) per week. The claim of up to 245km per week is a bit misleading.

Looking at the chart they provide, that assumes perfect conditions in the month of June only. A sunny week in December will only provide 70km.

But going off the stated ‘average’ of 69.6 miles a week, roughly 10 miles for a whole day of collecting sun. You might get nice returns on a sunny day in the summer, but in general year round, your probably lucky to get 3-5 miles.

Elon Musk spoke about this on Joe Rogan recently, and said it’s just not worth it. The return on investment is just so small, and we’ve essentially reached the technical limits of what solar panels can provide. So we will likely never see this in a Tesla.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#243

Post by rbanffy »

bagacrap wrote: post #228
coding123 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 8 hours it's parked at work will likely charge the 20 mile round-trip. For some people it will literally never need to be charged or serviced. For other types, like me, I drive about 4 hours a week over 2 trips, but the rest of the time it would just sit at home, probably charging at least half of that drive time. So I would need to plug it in. That being said I'm planning out a 12Kw+ solar for home anyway.

Sure, as long as they live near the equator and it's sunny 365 days a year.

Consider it'll be charging, even if a little, all the time the car is in the open air at daytime.

In shopping mall parking lots there is often some chargers, but more often than not they seem to be occupied. With a car like this, unless you drive a lot, you can park the car anywhere in the parking lot and not think about the charger.

My pre-COVID commute was about 28 km if I chose the scenic route with no traffic lights, or 12 if I crossed the city (I usually took mass transit, so I could read instead of drive). My post-COVID commute will probably be much smaller, as we are all going remote with sporadic visits to the office. I can get to the beach or the mountains within 5 km. For my post-COVID needs, this car would almost never need to be plugged (maybe during winter because these latitudes make the days short).

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#244

Post by rbanffy »

Rule35 wrote: post #167
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…

Bus roofs are much better for solar than compact cars and you have a use for that incidental power in a way a car does not. As for the car, I imagine people will burn the energy and more by turning on the air conditioning when they get into their hot car that they intentionally parked in the sun. Did you glue(/etc) the panels to the roof or did you have to mount them on standoffs?

> turning on the air conditioning

You could cool it a bit with a Stirling engine and get a little more power from the overheated interior. ;-)

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#245

Post by Qwertious »

I think this has an undervalued benefit: if you run out of charge somehow, the trickle will let you limp to the charging station.

Like, EVs going fast take far more power than cars going slow due to wind resistance, so if you're travelling 5KM/hr then you'll take an order of magnitude less power. And if you do run out of power, you only need to get to the nearest wall plug or charger.

Obviously, cost makes this a very niche feature currently and generally you shouldn't run out of battery in most situations anyway. That said, this could be a good "better late than never" sort of thing on luxury cars.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#246

Post by SyzygistSix »

mjhagen wrote: post #135
hexa00 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These places also tend to have underground parking :(

or not much need for cars at all

This. We'll always need a certain amount of cars for delivery and people with disabilities but the majority of people can walk or bicycle in cities. It would do us some good, in fact. Not just the additional exercise but also bringing back a culture that is less in a hurry, less time -enslaved, and less disconnected from the outside. Our cultural disconnect from reality is as much at fault regarding global warming as our technology is.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#247

Post by SyzygistSix »

Retric wrote: post #82
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.

PV’s are light and can in theory get you ~12k/year range. Assuming the car is parked outside it seems like a win over home instillation of charging port, inverters, panels, etc. Obvious downsides include significant increases in repair costs in the event of an accident etc. But, panels have gotten cheap enough that this is at least worth considering. PS: I agree it’s unlikely to turn into an actual product, but it’s…

In the suburbs, I would think that covering parking lots with solar panels would be more efficient. Especially in places like Florida and the SouthWest that can use more shade.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#248

Post by Qwertious »

jiofih wrote: post #153
kamranjon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My dream HN feature is only allowing comments after the main link has been visited for 5 minutes.

Personally I'd like if you could click on the link and then hit the "back" button to go directly to the comments.

You can work around by clicking the comments and then the link, but then you look at the top comment and are tempted to read and then respond.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#249

Post by rbanffy »

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.

> Install them at home and charge

This will only work in single-family homes. Where I live it's more common to have 4-floor buildings and street parking. In that case, the street gets enough sunlight for the car to charge enough for short-ish commutes (which are the norm for urbanites anyway).

> Anyway, I think this product is fake and scam.

I agree they are promising a lot, but they are not promising anything impossible. It's too soon to tell anyway and whoever invests in them must understand this is a high-risk/high-reward strategy.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#250

Post by MayeulC »

ben_w wrote: post #219
eldaisfish wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Now that you mention the price, adding a few cheap cells to the roof could help prevent against deep discharge if one was to leave a car unattended for a long while.
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