Neither do I. Sorry guys please disregard video link in post #33, shouldn’t have posted it. Don’t know what I was thinking.
The Sion solar car claims to have 7,5 square meters of solar cell area total.
Kilowatt hours are energy, not power. There must be an implicit per unit of time in your statement, but you don’t say what unit. Per day?
I meant per day. I just caught that myself on re-reading before I saw your message. Sorry.
I believe the correct unit for measuring kWh/day is the pirate-ninja.
A pirate-ninja is 25/24th a kWh/D
Some people drive only a few miles a day. I average less than 5 miles a day. It doesn’t cost much to pay for gas or electricity to travel 5 miles, but someone living in the southwest might never need to plug in or fuel their car if it has a solar panel.
You average less than 5 miles a day, but how is that distributed? Two miles in the morning and three in the afternoon each day is different from 35 every Sunday.
Not in this instance. Even if it takes a week to trickle-charge the battery, it only has to be ready by next Sunday.
I only have a slow home charger for my Tesla that puts in about 40 miles per night (out of 300). When I visit my parents, I usually return with a nearly drained battery. But that’s fine since my commute is only 8 miles. Maybe it takes a week to recharge but I don’t really care. The big battery smooths out the irregularity.
There are certainly applications for solar charging an EV. We have a second vehicle that is only driven a few miles per week - mostly as a runabout for groceries and stuff when the other car is in use. If that car were parked out in the sun, it’s conceivable that we would never have to plug it in.
However… If you drive a vehicle such small distances, your environmental impact is very low anyway. And a car that drives few miles like that would be very expensive if you bought a new EV to do it. The depreciation per mile would make it really expensive transportation. And for that kind of use, a cheaper plug-in hybrid would be fine. If you are only driving 30 miles per week, why lug around a 1200 lb battery?
A plug in hybrid with a 47 mile electric range (ie Honda Clarity) in the same role might only see the gas engine start a few times pee year. And if you did need to take a long trip (or your solar cells didn’t charge enough because of bad weather or something), the gas engine is there to bail you out.
I think plug-in hybrids are being underrated by EV fans. 80% of all driving is done less than 20km from home. But 20% is long distance driving that is tough for an all-electric car.
Back in 2015,I wrote about the RV I helped a friend build. We put a couple of solar panels on the roof, and their main purpose was to run the fridge, lighting and computer when parked while he was out kayaking.
Not if the panel is built-in. Solar cells embedded in the ceiling and hood.
I suppose an update on this is in order. The three companies working on solar cars are in varying amounts of financial stress.
Considering they are supposedly too big for the typical garage - no problem there.
Once it’s delivered…
The Fisker Ocean (Fisker Ocean | Fisker Inc.) has them. Seem like a gimmick to me. I figure maybe 2 square meters of solar cell at best. I measured a picture of the top of the car, compared to its dimensions and got 1.8. Maybe 400 watts under ideal conditions. I don’t know where Fisker gets their figure that it can add 2000 miles / year under ideal conditions. I didn’t chase the footnote on that page.
ETA:
The Fisker looks like an interesting vehicle anyway. They went almost bust on the Karma. They seem to be going for something more practical here.