Quote:
Originally Posted by Drifter
A lot of people are car camping these days and small solar setups allow you to run a laptop or small cooler without the engine. #vanlife
Possible? Of course. Worth it? Probably not for 99% of people given the DIY wiring, controllers/inverters you would need and the much higher risks you'd be assuming. OEM plug-in hybrids and EVs occasionally catch fire from defects & bad designs - are you going to do at least as good of a job as them? And for what? An extra 1/4 mile of EV range after parking it all afternoon?
On the other hand, I could see trickle charging your 12v being beneficial. You'd be able to use off-the-shelf components and, while you wouldn't boost EV range, you would increase your mpg - especially at low speeds.
Here is a graph of the calculated mpg of a gen1 prius at different speeds:
Notice how the 511watt load of just running the car's computers affects slow-speed mpg (pink mpg curve is with no fixed load, red is with). You might be able to squeeze 500 watts of solar panels on your car in which case your mpg gains would be like going from the red line to the pink line when driving under the midday sun. Negligible at 80mph, but significant at 20mph... |
I wonder how I could set that up in an easy way