Quote:
Originally Posted by RedDevil
If solar is cheap, light and robust enough to apply to the roof of an EV - why not? It can help keep the car cool in summer, it can prevent bricking the battery when the car isn't used for a long time. But it won't have a big effect on range.
Yet, any help, however small, is a benefit.
Stella Vie is super light and has a gigantic solar panel. Therefore it can potentially run hundreds of miles a day on solar alone. If your car has 4 times the drag and a quarter of the area at half the PV efficiency, only about 10 added miles remain.
The better batteries get, the less reason to mount PV panels on cars.
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That's exactly it. Basically you've said if PV were better in every way, then it might be useful on a vehicle. There's currently a use for PV, but it's not for providing EV range, but instead maintaining 12v battery health and maybe ventilating the cabin (crack the windows instead?).
Quote:
Originally Posted by All Darc
Exactly !!!
And with low weight and low drag, you don't need much batteries. And with the solar panel, in huge area, in a low weight car, being relevant due these condition as you said, the solar panel saves the need of a lot of batteries, since the solar output will be relevant for such car.
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Yes, if you build an engineering marvel at great cost, that has almost zero utility, you can benefit from solar. We're talking about practical vehicles for the masses, not a university science experiment funded by grants.
The reason vehicle mounted PV isn't used to charge the traction battery on production vehicles is because it's a dumb idea, not because nobody has thought of it yet.