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Hyundai Releases Car With Solar Panel Roof (bbc.com) 106

Posted by BeauHD from the added-benefits dept.
Hyundai has released a version of its Sonata hybrid that has solar panels to help charge its battery. The BBC reports: The Korean car maker said up to 60% of the power for the car's battery could be supplied if the solar roof was used for six hours a day. The panels would provide enough power to propel the Sonata for 1,300km (800miles) a year, it added. Hyundai said it planned to offer the roof as an optional extra on other models in its range. The solar-roof equipped Sonata will be on sale in North America and Korea. Hyundai said it had no plans to sell it in other regions. No price for the hybrid passenger car equipped with a solar roof has been given by Hyundai. Stephen Edelstein from Digital Trends said: "Hybrids like the Sonata have smaller battery packs than all-electric cars, so a solar roof can make a bigger difference in charging." With that said, solar cells add cost and weight to cars, so "it's unclear how effective they can be in the real world," he added.
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Hyundai Releases Car With Solar Panel Roof More

Hyundai Releases Car With Solar Panel Roof

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  • Wow that's horrendously bad. The price of the panels and housing is way way over the 2.5-3 tanks of gas that would get you 800 miles.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      40mpg, 20gal, $50/year in "ideal" conditions. Explains why no-one else has bothered to do such a stunt.
      And you have to park in the sun, so stinking hot when you get in, and the plastic interior ages. No thanks.

      • Re: 800 miles a YEAR!??! (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I have to park in the sun anyway,might as well benefit from it.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by blindseer ( 891256 )

          I have to park in the sun anyway,might as well benefit from it.

          The benefit I want from solar PV cells on the roof is powering some kind of fan or air conditioner to keep the cabin cool enough that I don't have my fingerprints burned off when I touch the steering wheel.

          My guess is that this material that is supposed to direct heat into space that was in a previous Slashdot entry would be far more effective in doing that than a solar PV panel and a few fans.

          • Re: 800 miles a YEAR!??! (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Just put 5%VLT window film on your roof. Under a buck a square foot and installs in a few minutes (plus an hour to super clean the roof first). Smooth it out, then lacquer the edges.

            Make sure your local laws allow it though, as the glare may be blinding to bug rigs and jacked up vehicles.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by quenda ( 644621 )

            to keep the cabin cool enough that I don't have my fingerprints burned off when I touch the steering wheel.

            In Australia, white cars are still popular for this reason. Combine that with a reflective screen that you place under the windscreen when parked, and the burning is avoided. But the car interior still ages prematurely.

            • My 1998 Audi A8 has a solar sunroof, has spent most of its life parked outside, and the interior is still like new.

              Probably doesn't hurt that it has double glazing either.

              For sale, $1000. Needs some assorted cosmetic love and some rear suspension bushes

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by quenda ( 644621 )

                Double-glazed windows on a car?!
                You must live in a cooler climate than I do.

                • In an automotive context they call it double glazing when there's a plastic layer between the glass layers, like the windshield. But the A8 has that all the way around. It's also got solar glass.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by quenda ( 644621 )

                    In an automotive context they call it double glazing when there's a plastic layer between the glass layers, like the windshield.

                    Sounds like marketing B.S. They lied^Wembellished, but not a surprise in a car salesman :-)
                    BTW, the damage I was talking about was from heat, not direct effect of sunlight, as of course the windows filter UV.

              • My Prius 2014 does this too - ideal to keep the car cooler

          • PV cells on the roof is powering some kind of fan or air conditioner

            Audi was the first to introduce that, I think. Around 2006 you could get an A8 with solar cells in the sunroof, that powered the ventilation system. PV does not provide enough power to run the AC (you'd need several kW).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jblues ( 1703158 )
            I was speculating in the other direction. With a solar panel energy that would've been absorbed and converted to heat is converted to electricity. So the car is already passively cooler. This energy can then be put to work in active cooling, ejecting more heat from the vehicle.

            • Yes! There's using the noggin. Only one issue--the panels are narrowband and the heat in this case is broadband. That aside, we recently had a story about capturing energy from infrared radiation and transmitting it in a narrower frequency band.

          • My 1998 Audi does this. It has a sunroof mounted solar panel which runs the blower motor. If you actually wanted this you could have had it decades ago

          • that would be awesome, however the energy received via current PV's is not sufficient to cool the interior of the car sufficiently... better is shading the car in some way and perhaps adding a fan that would be PV - powered.

            https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar... [tennessee.edu]

            So, roughly 1000 watts received per square meter available as heat energy, while with current solar cells being under 30% efficient, so less than 300 watts per square meter for cooling...

            Shade that area so it does not receive that heating and you wo

    • Panels are now down to around $0.50 per watt, retail.

      This is like Toyota's Prius PHV [global.toyota] - a step towards a "charge once per year car". [global.toyota]

      Oh and, Stephen Edelstein from Digital Trends is a fucking illiterate moron who can't look up current prices of solar panels, which he apparently last saw on one of those solar calculators.
      He is also supposedly usually traveling the country driving the latest cars [digitaltrends.com] while building up an encyclopedic knowledge of all things automotive, eye on the future of electric cars and connect

      • IT'S A TWO TON CAR STEVE!!! WEIGHT OF A FUCKIN PANEL IS A ROUNDIN ERROR!!!

        Yeah, that made me laugh. How much does the solar panel weigh, five kilograms?

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          A full 340W 60-cell 1.7x1m solar cell is 18-20 kg. But a lot of that is glass. It would not be impossible to use on a car, but flexible cells are easier to fit.
          A 160W 1.5x0.7m flexible panel (2mm thick) weighs 2.4 kg. Not sure how large the car is, but from the picture it looks like a square panel (2 rectangular), and the car is 1.7m wide so my guess is 2 of the flexible ones I listed or smaller. So 4-4.8 kg. $2000 though, so I guess they chose some with less performance for the car.

          • gotta subtract the weight of the roof that it is replacing too. I wonder if there is even 1kg of difference all said and told - the weight of a liter of water.

            From this forum https://www.corvetteforum.com/... [corvetteforum.com]

            A corvette's removable roof weights ~ 20lbs

            C6 transparent 20.22 lbs. C6 painted SMC 24.2 lbs (new style replacement roof) C6 painted Polycarbonate 20.90 lbs. (old style roof)

      • Panels are now down to around $0.50 per watt, retail.

        Where? Checking the interwebs for solar prices, I see numbers closer to $3/watt in the USA, before the Tax Credits. Which knock the price down by about 1/3.

    • The article doesn't say what kind of solar panels they are using, but solar panels are really cheap these days [amazon.com].
    • Did you factor in the pollution reduction?
    • It's a first step. The technology needs time to develop. People like you shitting on all new technologies only halt progress.

    • Wow that's horrendously bad. The price of the panels and housing is way way over the 2.5-3 tanks of gas that would get you 800 miles.

      Umm, per year... do you buy a new car every year? Kept 10 years is 8,000 miles.

      Things other than the up front cost that make this a questionable idea:

      How much more does it weigh than just a plain roof; it could be cut down on the mileage enough that the 800 miles per year is a wash.
      How well does it hold up to hail damage? Super sunny climes tend to have the occasional super violent storm roll through in the peak sunny season.

  • Manufacturing solar panels and associated hardware is energy intensive and produces quite a bit of carbon. So how many years do those panels need to function to beat out the carbon created in the manufacturing process?

  • I'm not sure that's good for the paint and interior.

    • It depends on the paint, interior, glass (solar tint?) and whether the car will run the blower to keep the interior "cool", which only takes around 10-20W. Just running the blower on low won't actually keep it cool obviously, but it will keep it to not far above ambient.

      If you keep the vehicle clean and waxed, and if the pigment is something very stable (preferably a color based on an oxide) then the paint can hold up for a long time, even in the sun. Ideally the vehicle would also have an aluminum body, so

  • Number seem to work out (Score:5, Informative)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @10:27PM (#59054946)
    • Sonata hybrid is rated at 34 kWh / 100 miles [fueleconomy.gov]
    • (800 miles / year) / (365 days / year) = 2.19 miles / day
    • (2.19 miles / day) * (0.34 kWh / mile) = 745 Wh / day
    • (745 Wh / day) / (24 hours / day) / ( (160 Watts/m^2) * (0.145 capacity factor for continental U.S.) ) = 1.34 m^2 of panels

    Eyeballing the roof of the Sonata in the photo, 1.3 m^2 looks plausible, so the math seems to work out. No trickery with installed capacity vs actual production here. We're leaving out voltage conversion efficiency and battery charging efficiency, but the roof could actually be closer to 2 m^2 which should cover those losses

    But now for the fly in the ointment:

    • (800 miles / year) * (34 kWh / 100 miles) = 272 kWh / year
    • (272 kWh / year) * (11.5 cents / kWh average U.S. electricity price) = $31.28 / year
    • The car needs to be parked outdoors in a non-shaded area during all daylight hours to achieve this level of solar panel generation.

    Whether this is worth it will depend on how much Hyundai charges for it. If you go with 2 m^2 of panels, a PV solar kit this size for sailboats costs (with the appropriate conversion and regulation electronics) around $500. At $500 you'd be at around a 15 year payback time. But if Hyundai makes this a $1500 option...

    • Re:Number seem to work out (Score:4, Interesting)

      by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@@@earthlink...net> on Tuesday August 06, 2019 @11:17PM (#59055080)

      The car needs to be parked outdoors in a non-shaded area during all daylight hours to achieve this level of solar panel generation.

      For people that work daylight hours at a place that has no covered parking then this would certainly apply. I estimate that this is a good sized portion of the driving population.

      As you point out the cost of the additional panel might not pay for the fuel savings but it does offer some of an answer for the range anxiety types and/or the treehugger types. This model has, according to a couple sources found from a Google search, a 28 mile range on electric power alone. For someone that makes a 20 mile commute most every day this means potentially never having to stop for fuel again. That convenience of not needing to plug in or stop for fuel, and/or knowing that this charge is from a "green" solar power source, is likely to be worth more than the money saved to some. I don't know how large that market would be.

      This charge from sitting in the sun only works when the sun is shining so on cloudy days there will be less than a full recharge. This will have an effect on the payback time. Even so the "I'm saving the planet with my solar car" conspicuous consumer types will likely flock to this at almost any price.

      Personally I'd like to see more car makers offer more vehicles with an option to run off natural gas. The CO2 and pollution from natural gas is lower than gasoline or diesel fuel, the ability to fill up at home where there is natural gas service has to be a selling point, quick fill up times at properly equipped filling stations has to be nice, and no range anxiety from the limited range of battery EVs. Of course a natural gas-electric hybrid would be nice too.

      • The CO2 and pollution from natural gas is lower than gasoline or diesel fuel

        This is debatable. Methane is 84 times as efficient as CO2 as a greenhouse gas. It has a half-life of about 30 years, during which it becomes water and CO2.

        And even more unfortunately, natural gas distribution, especially to non-industrial users, is remarkable.

        • I meant to say: And even more unfortunately, leakage of natural gas during distribution, especially to non-industrial users, is remarkable.

        • Methane is 84 times as efficient as CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

          This is true, but not related to natural gas (LPG or CNG) in cars. Like gasoline, it's CO2 and water vapor that come out of the tailpipe, not methane. Since natural gas has a lower carbon content than gasoline, it produces less CO2 during combustion. LPG and CNG produce about 15% less CO2 [engineeringtoolbox.com] for the same mount of power.

      • Personally I'd like to see more car makers offer more vehicles with an option to run off natural gas.

        Increased natgas production is predicated upon increased fracking. CNG requires expensive tanks compared to LPG. Both CNG and LPG tanks have to be hydro-tested on a schedule, whether they're motor fuel tanks or not; the motor fuel tanks cost more, and the CNG tanks cost the most.

      • Personally I'd like to see more car makers offer more vehicles with an option to run off natural gas.

        If you're going to use a compressed gas for fuel then you're better off with hydrogen. It's cleaner to both burn and produce, it's less polluting in an accident, safer to breath, and weighs about half as much per unit of energy if you factor in the weight of the pressure tanks. The only downsides are that it's less efficient in terms of volume, and it doesn't offer the same kind of profits for the existing fossil fuel interests.

    • Yes its not a lot of power. I estimate 1300km / 10km/L = 130L *$1.50 = $195 or so...

      so 200 dollars a year you are "Saving". Putting aside that everyone would accept $200 in free money a year, there are other uses for solar in a car such as charging the conventional battery (to start the car), and providing power for accessories like the radio. Especially camping, or any place where you aren't near power. A few watts in the wilderness costs far more than a few watts in the city!

      I think its neat and i think i

      • "Yes its not a lot of power....."
        "The Korean car maker said up to 60% of the power for the car's battery could be supplied if the solar roof was used for six hours a day."

        This is not about "POWER" but ENERGY.

        Conclusion...ahem... 60% of battery capacity lasts for 2.19 miles ?

    • Factor in that it doesn't have to to be plugged in to charge as often as normal or for as long as normal.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      PV solar kit this size for sailboats costs (with the appropriate conversion and regulation electronics) around $500

      But how much does adding a mains supplied charger cost to the car? The AC/DC converter, safety cut off stuff... Even the EVSE (the special cable that plugs in to a standard socket rather than a dedicated charger) is around $500, even the ones on AliExpress.

      A better comparison would be with the cost of petrol. Say it's not particularly efficient, 272kWh should get it around 1,500km or 930 miles. Here it gets tricky because I don't know US gas prices and US gallons are different to UK gallons, but it seems to be in the $100/year range.

      Still not great but if they did price it at $500 it would be worth it over the lifetime of the car.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      What about outside the USA with green "energy" cost tax eg. VAT, electricity tax, green energy tax, per hour peak costs?
      Get some low rate on the first amount of kWh? Then the price changes?
      That 11.5 cents / kWh average U.S. electricity price could go way up per day in "green" nations :)
      30~40 cents USD? "Electricity pricing" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eepok ( 545733 )

      If there was a "best comment" award for Slashdot articles, this would get the award.

      The only possible additional point you could have spoken to would be the subjective value of being to effectively refuel the car in the middle of nowhere. Let's say you're driving somewhere and you run out of gas because you're an absolute numpty. Sit around a while in the sun and your car recharges a bit, and you can move on a bit.

      But that's it. Great post.

  • Up to 60% or more! https://xkcd.com/870/ [xkcd.com]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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