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Electric car that charges itself

sonomotors.com

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Re: Electric car that charges itself

#31

Post by onion2k »

onethought wrote: post #24
bobthepanda wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they'd barely charge themselves, let alone feed anything back into the grid?

True. Much better to just not generate any power so that they don’t charge themselves at all and don’t feed anything to the grid.

It'd be a more efficient use of money and resources to put the solar panels on a roof to generate more electricity than they'd generate on a car, and make a car with a bigger battery rather than solar panels. So yes, your sarcastic remark is actually 100% correct.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#32

Post by Robotbeat »

onethought wrote: post #22
liamkinne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On their Twitter there’s video showing it getting 100W in full sunlight. That’s the equivalent to 0.5m^2 of rooftop solar. It’s just not worth the effort of putting the cells on the car.

So a car park of them would generate many kWs. Why isn’t it “worth” it... turning car parks into solar farms sounds pretty cool to me.

Because bidirectional car chargers cost thousands more than regular L2 chargers.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#33

Post by jillesvangurp »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #7

This 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.

Lots of cars don't drive much more than this per week and just sit outside on the drive way or parking lot. They are only used for short trips to work or shops.

Solar charging ensures you only rarely have to plug it in to top it up, which is convenient. It also means that if you leave it sitting outside for long periods of time, it will be topped up rather than slightly drained when you get back to it. That convenience is not worth a lot of course but solar panels are cheap. And also, not having to pay for the electricity is nice.

E.g. my mother has a car that averages less than 3000 km/year (seriously). With this, she'd never have to plug it in (or rather visit a petrol station). My parents live in a small village and most of the trips are basically 15km round trips to a near by city. Something like this but a bit cheaper would be perfect for them and decimate their fuel expenses.

Will this cover all your needs? No of course not. But solar panels are cheap so the added cost of this convenience might be worth it.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#34

Post by mavhc »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #33
dreamcompiler wrote: post #7

This 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.

Lots of cars don't drive much more than this per week and just sit outside on the drive way or parking lot. They are only used for short trips to work or shops. Solar charging ensures you only rarely have to plug it in to top it up, which is convenient. It also means that if you leave it sitting outside for long periods of time, it will be topped up rather than slightly drained when you get back to it. That convenien…

Those cars shouldn't exist at all though, massive waste of resources, renting cars should be much much simpler and cheaper

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#35

Post by Robotbeat »

I saw a pretty interesting van/RV project which actually had sizable amount of solar panels. About 8kW worth. They unfold and can be manually tilted and tracked to follow the sun roughly in the sky.

It’s pretty interesting. That much solar (with 140kWh of battery!) is more than sufficient to allow totally off-grid living and trips to the store. Now THAT would be interesting, if you could get the bugs worked out and mass produce it cheaply.

(It’s really hard to find affordable flexible solar panels. Regular solar panels weigh 3 times as much for the same power but cost a third as much in wholesale. Anyway know of cheap flexible solar panels, ie 50¢/Watt or so?)

Link to the solar van/RV: https://youtu.be/5uUh23GDW08

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#37

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

koksik202 wrote: post #30
dreamcompiler wrote: post #7

This 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 people using their cars once or twice a week to drive 10km to do groceries this will suit them and with having more housing estate with no basic amenities within walking distance this will defiantly fit families with a main car for work commute and second car for small trips like this while one parent is at work with fossil fueled car

> For people using their cars once or twice a week to drive 10km to do groceries this will suit them

Wouldn't they be even better suited to a regular electric car, parked under a roof of solar panels? The simple flat solar roof will be cheaper to make, and be a larger useful surface. And easier to replace, will keep the weather off the car, reduces car weight, etc.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#38

Post by darawk »

mavhc wrote: post #34
jillesvangurp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of cars don't drive much more than this per week and just sit outside on the drive way or parking lot. They are only used for short trips to work or shops. Solar charging ensures you only rarely have to plug it in to top it up, which is convenient. It also means that if you leave it sitting outside for long periods of time, it will be topped up rather than slightly drained when you get back to it. That convenien…

Those cars shouldn't exist at all though, massive waste of resources, renting cars should be much much simpler and cheaper

Lots of people have a 10 mile or less round trip commute. At that distance, you can drive to and from work every day using this car. I don't think most people would want to rent a vehicle for this.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#39

Post by ctdonath »

Tesla Cybertruck may have an option for solar panels as a pickup bed cover, able to produce a few miles of range daily. Not much per dollar normally, but great that in a worst case scenario it can, given some time, harvest enough power to find an outlet.

Re: Electric car that charges itself

#40

Post by bartvk »

kristopolous wrote: post #19
onion2k wrote: post #2

First to get to market but certainly not the only player in the solar-powered self-charging production car space. There's enough of them that there's a Wikipedia page - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_car

It's such a silly claim to put on their page. They aren't even available yet. Aptera and Lightyear both have earlier projected delivery dates so even if we are saying "stock consumer car, off the lot, no after market" they're still wrong People who know better are like "no it's not" and people who don't will spread it and be told they're wrong. Solar charging solves the fueling problem for commuters in sunny environm…

You say they aren't even available yet. That may have been acceptable, but they have quite a history of not delivering.

Production should have started in 2019, and they have accepted money in 2018. It's now 2021 and we're looking at 2023 delivery, with a significant price increase.

In the meantime, the specs aren't all that interesting anymore.

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