Aptera Reboot - Improved

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

AWD is stupid. It belongs on vehicles that actually go off road in very low traction scenarios.

4WD? AWD is helpful on black ice. There was a red Audi that just ran away from me just before I spun out in my Superbeetle.

Pickups are stupid.

Cybertruck?

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by blownb310

Then don't buy that package. Nobody cares what you think anyway.

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.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

There are a lot of things you can call stupid.

AWD is stupid. It belongs on vehicles that actually go off road in very low traction scenarios.

Touch screens are stupid. I don't think they belong on cell phones, much less on cars.

Pickups are stupid. What's the point of having an exposed cargo bed that's a hernia making 4ft off the ground?

EVs in general are stupid. Enormous batteries belong on solar and wind farms not in vehicles that cost more to have a limited range that can take hours, and in some cases days, to "refuel."

Yes the meter high factory lifted pickups are pretty dumb. That's why my trailer is about 16 inches off the ground.

Grid batteries are pretty much useless. It takes thousands of tesla car batteries just to replace the output of a power plant for an hour. We old be much better off with more EVs and exporting all that gasoline.

The only people who have to charge their electric vehicles for days are math rubes who assumed level 1 charging would be fast enough. Before I even bought my leaf I knew level 1 charging wasn't going to cut it.

[freebeard]

I will channel my inner aerohead for this.

....living rent-free in your head? Needs a closing parenthesis, e.g., 1), 2), 3), etc.

I can imagine a specific electric vehicle that could have two 3x4ft panels structured like a Beetle's outer wing on 3-axis gimbal mounts that are sun-tracking and store as a boat tail. Perfect for the new solar cells that treat light as a wave instead of a particle and deliver 100% efficiency [citation needed].

But then, I live rent-free in my own head

Grid batteries should be swimming pools full of liquid metals.

[Isaac Zachary]

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.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Or get a solar package and drive most of the time off of solar power and use public charging as needed.
5. 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.

[oil pan 4]

I do think like 4x4 or awd too, it seems like it's either always breaking or broken when needed or some part of the AWD or 4x4 system is in the way of something else that needs to be worked on.

40 miles per day from solar panels on an EV is sky high over optimistic, anyone one who tells you that is hopelessly optimistic and likely a math illiterate. That would take at least 10kwh, to harvest 10kwh per day in new Mexico you would need around 1.5 to 2kw of panels. That exceeds the total surface area of the car, to include windows and wind screen.

Potentially you could buy $1,500 worth of panels, get about 3kw of capacity which I'm is the minimum amount of use able capacity. But you still need racking, grid tie in which is varying from electricity provider to electricity provider and state by state.
In new Mexico they make it very difficult, effectively impossible to connect something you build your self to the power grid, with out detailed insider knowledge.

[freebeard]

In a post-Apocalyptic scenario, with a need to move maybe once a week, you'd have a reasonable use case for a self-contained unit.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

40 miles per day from solar panels on an EV is sky high over optimistic, anyone one who tells you that is hopelessly optimistic and likely a math illiterate.

Taking clouds, Earth curvature, the angles of the Sun rising and setting, the period called "night" and your common solar panel's efficiency all into consideration the MATH says that for every square meter of your common solar panel that's facing directly up in an average place on Earth with avearge weather at an average time of the year you get 1.5 kWh per day.

Aptera says they will have 3 square meters of solar panels.

Doing the actual MATH says:

3 x 1.5 kWh = 4.5 kWh
4.5 kWh x 89% from PV to battery efficiency = 4 kWh

Aptera claims 10 miles per kWh.

4 kWh x 10 = 40 miles... in an average place on Earth on an average day.

According to those numbers there will be days and places on Earth where much more than 40 miles in a day would be possible.

The only people who assume that solar on a car is overly optimistic also assume an Aptera will get the same or worse efficiency as a Tesla Model 3 at only 4 miles per kWh.

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Potentially you could buy $1,500 worth of panels, get about 3kw of capacity which I'm is the minimum amount of use able capacity. But you still need racking, grid tie in which is varying from electricity provider to electricity provider and state by state.

"Potentially" doesn't provide a real alternative and even if it were possible to throw some solar panels on a roof and hook them up for a reasonable price it still wouldn't address every use case scenario for solar panels on a car.

Just because throwing solar panels up on the roof of a house has it's advantages doesn't mean a thing if you have too many hurdles to pull it off, especially if it ends up costing you significantly more per actual kWh obtained than what could be made from off the car's solar panels.

And even if you could get 4 kWh per day, averaged, from PV to EV battery from solar panels on your house for less than the $1,500 in question it still wouldn't fit every use case that solar on a car would.

If Aptera's solar panels work as advertised, Aptera wins. If they don't, Aptera loses.

[redpoint5]

I will say that solar on an uber efficient niche vehicle like Aptera makes more sense than other EVs which are substantially less efficient.

900 watts of solar on the EV Hummer would be a joke.

[oil pan 4]

Motor cycles don't even get 10 miles per kwh in real world driving. I have no doubt Aptera can achieve 10 miles per kwh at some nearly useless speed.