Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
At least I'm intelligent enough to give a reason why it's stupid.
I'll give more reasons why putting solar panels on a car is totally idiotic, wasteful and not the least bit good or helpful to the environment.
I will channel my inner aerohead for this.
1 solar panels develop lower voltages, stepping up tens of volts to the hundreds of volts required to charge a EV battery will create huge losses.
2 any attempts to use more smaller cells in series to get a higher voltage means more connections, a more fragile setup easier to break, impossible to repair, even more expensive.
3 any attempts to make the panels bigger means not all of the cells will get sun, one blocked cell can cut panel power output in half.
4 anyone who lives in a sunny area where solar panels would be most effective is trying to park in the shade.
5 easily damaged by hail and non repairable, just take the whole roof panel, hood, trunk lid what ever is covered with solar cells, chuck it in the trash and replace with a new one.
6, waste of resources, will cost thousands of dollars, maybe generate hundreds of dollars worth of power.
Waste of valuable resource, solar panels laying flat like in a car roof will run at about 2/3 of peak power compared to being angled towards the sun.
7, stupid wasteful application. The average vehicle in the US lasts 11 years, a typical roof top solar panel will last 25 to 30 years. Only an idiot would use a solar panel for half it's life then crush it and throw it away.
8 only people from new England or the Pacific nw who barely see the sun will think this is a good idea as they have no clue what high production solar intensity looks like.
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That still doesn't address a proper alternative to the use case scenario. It's like AWD or 4WD. Sure, most people don't need it. But for the few who do truly use it, telling them it's stupid and to get an alternative doesn't make much sense.
I still think there's a couple use case scnenarios for solar panels on an EV that can give you 40 miles per day.
First is the appartment dweller. An appartment dweller has only a few options.
- Get permission from landlord to pay a contractor up to some $6,000 to dig a trench out to the parking lot and install an EVSE station there where hopefully no one else will park just so he or she can charge their EV there for the next two or there years until they move and have to do it all over again. And if they want to charge off of solar panels installed on the appartment building they might as well as forget about it.
- Move to an appartement building that provides an EVSE which isn't allways available in every town and city and could be very far, or too far, from work.
- Rely on public charging, either paying a whole lot more per charge, perhaps costing more to fuel than in an ICE; or waiting for hours at level 2 stations, all of which may be in inconvenient locations.
- Or get a solar package and drive most of the time off of solar power and use public charging as needed.
- Or just not drive an EV. EV's are for rich people who own their own home and can install their own EVSE whether the EV be new or used.
The second use case is if you want to venture off the beaten path of charging networks. At potentially 40 miles per day, a week long camping trip could give enough to get back out of where ever you camped. Having 1,000 of range to begin with also helps.
You guys keep talking about how much more efficient it is to put solar panels on a roof of a house. So my question is, if that's the case, how do I do that? I would like to get 40 miles of solar power for my EV please. Is there any way I could do that for $1,500 or less? I have my doubts.
I hate it when people say "you can't do this, and you can't do that" to something that (potentially) works without giving any suitable alternatives.