Ford Will Demo Solar-Charged Car At CES 179
Lucas123 writes "Ford plans to demonstrate its first solar-powered hybrid vehicle at CES next week. The Ford CMAX Solar Energi Concept car will have 1.5 square meters of solar photovoltaic cells on its roof to generate power to charge its battery. By themselves, the PV solar panels generate only 300W of power — not enough to charge the vehicle's battery in one day. Ford, however, said the car will be coupled with a carport that has solar concentrating lens atop it. The magnifying lens, called a Fresnel lens, will concentrate about 10 times the solar energy so the vehicle can be recharged in a single day — the same speed with which a standard hybrid charges using a plug." (Of course, some charge faster than others.)
Hope it doesn't melt the car! (Score:5, Interesting)
Stack of pennies reduced to molten nickel by fresnal lens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcL7s9aX494 [youtube.com]
Re:Hope it doesn't melt the car! (Score:4, Interesting)
Zinc. Melting nickel takes a little more.
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But there were five of them...
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drinkypoo [slashdot.org] is a disgusting, smelly, fat slob. He has never had sex and he still lives with his mother.
No one cares. On the internet, it only matters how you write and the quality of your ideas. Seriously, [wikipedia.org] who cares what he looks like? That's juvenile.
Re: Hope it doesn't melt the car! (Score:2)
First, those pennies aren't made of nickel, they're made of copper coated zinc.
Second, pennies don't melt when exposed to a fresnel lens of that size, they VAPORIZE! Or at least the zinc does anyway
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Concept cars are never manufactured. But this concept is more ridiculous than most.
Even if the car isn't melted, it's going to be obscenely hot to get in after a summer day's charging. Even if you can, you'll need most of the stored solar power to run air-conditioning.
Besides, cars are generally driven during the day, and parked at home at night, when the sun isn't shining.
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The solar power captured by the fresnel lens wouldn't need to be very focused, as there's a rather large solar panel are and if the solar panel is efficient enough, is shouldn't let much heat through.
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So there are no black cars? (Score:3)
I really don't get it why people are prepared to deliberately pretend to be far more stupid than they are just to try to find something negative about a technology they do not like.
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Mod parent up.
+1 Duh!
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Once again you are pretending to be far more stupid than you are.
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So, what points are you denying?
1. The heating of the panel by the fresnel lens?
2. Good insulation would help?
3. A good air conditioner would be useful in such a car?
On the AC
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Lets imagine they have super awesome efficient solar panels, converting 40% of the energy into electricity.
They're getting 1000% more heat due to the lens above. That's 600% more heat absorbed than a regular car parked in the sun.
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But, with this if the heat is an issue you can filter out that bit of the spectrum that would otherwise turn into heat and only lens and allow through the useful bits of the spectrum. We just don't because who cares if your solar panels get hot. In this case, we would.
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Re: Why does it get hot? (Score:2)
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I don't know what you mean by "efficient enough", but typically solar PV is around 20% efficient or less. So most of the light is probably convert to heat.
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Plus any idiot who has walked outside knows that the sun radiates heat in addition to visible light.
This concept would understandably cause confusion for Slashdot readers. Anything 'outside' might as well be in a different country for them.
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You know, you can filter light right. The visual light spectrum isn't very hot. You can filter out the IR and the UV which tends to become IR after hitting something at the lens. You only need to let through the narrow spectrum the panel actually uses. Doing so would actually make it be about as cool as the shade.
And we aren't talking about anything fancy. Even if you still had to charge it, it would be kind of awesome to run out of power but have enough to make it home after a few hours of sun. And it isn'
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The obvious way around this is to have a heat exchanger under the solar panels, then use some energy to cool the solar panels through the radiator. A car's radiator should be able to handle ~2kw incoming heat load, with just a pump. It would help improve efficency as well, since solar panels charge better when they're cool.
Re:Hope it doesn't melt the car! (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious way around this is to have a heat exchanger under the solar panels
A more obvious way around it is to have the panels feed their power into the grid, so that they can be productive whether the car is in the carport or not. Then charge the car from the grid so it can still be charged at night, on cloudy days, or when parked somewhere else.
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That's great so long as you have grid power where you park your car. Believe it or not but there are still places on this Earth where an electrical outlet is more than ten feet away.
Also, that solar panel would be just as productive on the car as on someone's roof. That is unless the car happens to have to drive through a lot of long tunnels. I suppose parking the car in a garage would destroy the gains of having a solar panel on the roof but then if someone buys a solar charging car and parks it in a ga
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Also, that solar panel would be just as productive on the car as on someone's roof.
Not true. If the car leaves the carport the productivity of the panel drops by a factor of ten, because the sunlight is no longer focused by the fresnel lens.
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Yeah, slapping a solar panel on the roof seems like it would be easy and great. But, the whole special car port thing seems like a pain in the ass. Where am I suppose to put my special car port? And why don't I just have a solar panel and lens charge up some batteries and then use that power. The solar panel on the roof is great, the special nonsense carport seems like it would be mostly pointless.
It seems like the easiest bit is just to have the car have a panel on the roof, and let the chips fall where th
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Well actually what I see as the killer app for this is being able to run climate control in your vehicle and not having to worry about draining your batteries. Being able to run 300w AC power, while not spectacular, could keep you from roasting potentially. Especially if you put reflective panels in your windows when you leave.
Speaking of which, why has no car manufacturer bothered to make a car that can automatically hoist up a window sized aluminum plate with your windows when you park? Hmm...
(tsk tsk tsk) The poor puddy tat... (Score:2)
.
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Well, you have to admit, the cat did want a warm place to lie on ...
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So the question we all want to know is can this actually happen?
Will a bird/cat/rodent be fried when they enter the beam?
Well we know the car roof has an area of 1.5 square meters and the lens provides 10 times the energy that would fall on the car roof. Using standard insolation of 1000 watts/m^2, we can deduce that the solar radiation flux on the car after the lens is 10000 watts/m^2.
So is this enough to fry a cat? The answer is.... yes, but it wouldn't happen instantly! According to wolfram alpha 10000 w
Good to have around (Score:2)
It's good to have solar-powered things spread around, in case of major power grid problems. As LED street lights are installed, some of them should be solar powered. Especially in areas with a history of floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.
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Would it not be simpler to stop installing street lights outside of high pedestrian areas and intersections? Streetlights cost significant amounts of money while hurting drivers night vision and directly polluting the night sky.
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You're talking about major maintenance and extra up-front costs, as workers have to drive around, non-stop, constantly replacing failing (SLA) batteries. They last only a few years, and spread across thousands of street lights, you'd be changing several every single day.
concept cars .. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a parallel universe of concept cars somewhere, where you can drive a microturbine powered Jaguar, solar charged Ford, Mitsubishi EVO with in-wheel motors and ATTESA-like control, there are probably a bunch of nuclear powered Ford Nucleons whizzing about as well, and everyone swaps batteries in project Better Places station like there is no tomorrow. The logo of Shell is largely replaced by Duracell in cityscapes.
Meanwhile in the real world, we can all buy a Tesla Model S for a low starting price of cool $70K or thereabouts and hope they install a fast charger somewhere close by. And of course, wait in line.
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Plus, the cars fly, airplanes are nuclear powered and we have a colony on the moon.
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This ignores the point of concept cars. Those solar panels aren't generating power so much as hype.
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I don't remember Nissan tooling around car shows showing off one useless and impractical EV concept after another before they unveiled Leaf in pretty much in it's production configuration.
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You can charge EVs from normal outlets or non-ultra-fast chargers. With over 200 miles range it isn't much of an issue in the real world.
Put the panels on the canopy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why put them on the car? Put 10x the panels on the canopy and run a WIRE to the car to charge it. The panels could go to the grid if the car is not present. The weight savings will help the car, they will be cheaper panels for the wattage on the canopy and you can have a real amount of them. Panels on top of the car will often be wasted being covered by trees, parking garages and being at a less then optimum angle.
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Because this is a PR stunt.
It would be even cooler if they smoked the household cat in the process. I might see that as a feature. (My wife puts out food for strays, and the house is regularly mobbed by cats and raccoons, who sometimes fight with each other. It's one of those things where you go "yes, dear" and try not to listen to the noise.)
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What you describe is basically a Tesla Supercharger. Looks like a petrol station and the roof is coveted in panels.
Why on the car? (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be better to just build the solar cell into the carport so it can charge a battery all day while the car is driving around, then plug the car into the carport to be charged by the battery at night?
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Wouldn't it be better to just build the solar cell into the carport so it can charge a battery all day while the car is driving around, then plug the car into the carport to be charged by the battery at night?
Because then it wouldn't be a solar powered car. I mean, it technically would, but it wouldn't *look like* a solar powered car.
Why not make solar cells part of the carport? (Score:2)
If they are not useful for charging on the go, it's dead weight that hurts efficiency. Also I am sure the car gets very hot from concentrated solar power.
carport is ridiculous, but the rest is good (Score:2)
I agree the carport idea is ridiculous, but I generally like this idea. I drive my car only a few miles each day, and leave it parked in the sun all day while I am at work, so I could probably get most of my power from solar. We use my wife's car for long trips anyways.
This is just a variant of the plug-in hybrid they already sell. Still plugs in. Still has a gas engine for range. Only has the battery capacity for 21 electric-only miles, which is the weakest point I see.
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Agreed. This thing has 300 watts of solar panels on it. Assuming through the day you averaged 200 watts from them over 8 hours, you'd make 1.6 kwh of electricity, enough to power the car for 4.5 miles at 350 wh/mi.
Dear Ford.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Stop with the stupid.
The Car port, if covered with conventional solar panels will be a lot cheaper, easier to make, and will not require special manufacturing processes to create special lenses that follow the sun.
Less than 1/2 their price and I can make you a carport that will be double their power with conventional 200Watt panels. Plus require ZERO maintenance except for washing them once a year.
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Having solar panels on the car means that the car can generate enough electricity to overcome battery self-discharge. So if you leave it parked somewhere, like say the airport, for a couple weeks or even months you don't come back to an dead car.
Tesla draws about 50w all the time. A car without Tesla's poor standby electronics could even get a tiny bit of charge over time from the roof panels.
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Unless you park in the covered section...
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How should a 10m^2 solar panel be cheaper than a 10m^2 plexi glass fressnel lense?
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It's not completely stupid. Solar panels on the roof are like a range extender. And battery almost empty during a ride, and the next charging station not close by? Stop at a restaurant, eat something while the battery recharges a bit, and you are good to go.
The carport with lens is stupid, though.
10X? (Score:2)
I have no problem with putting, what, 20 square feet (maximum) of solar cells on the car roof. It'll trickle a little power into the batteries, and it's kinda cool, even if the weight and cost of the cells makes it impractical. But, a 200 square foot optical carport lens sounds ludicrous. Ugly, expensive, and requires an always-on, guaranteed 100% foolproof object avoidance system, so the car doesn't run over toys, pets, or toddlers as it shuffles back and forth under the lens.
You may say it's a "concept ca
I have one tiny problem with this. (Score:2)
There is another problem. The typical commuter is away from their car port during the best daylight hours.
That said, this would be perfect for me. I don't drive a car much so a solar panel would mean that I would plug the car in very rarely. I would love to drive for a year or more, check the charging logs and se
Re:Do not stare at Fresnel with remaining eye (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how many people are going to actually install the car-port? Who is going to fight the zoning issues, get building permits, put up with an ugly structure, and a car that moves by itself to stay in the Fresnel lens sweet spot? How many bikes, toys, and other associated back yard objects get run over?
I suppose the canopy could slide a cover over the lens when the car is absent.
But who wants to climb into an 800 degree car, and spend half the power gained running air conditioning units to cool it down?
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I think when the car is gone the carport could double as an industrial oven.
Re:Do not stare at Fresnel with remaining eye (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a few things to add as well:
Solar PV cells don't work well when they get hot, which is why we don't see lens technology on panels unless it is a very small one.
Other than the no-plug aspect, why even bother with this? Instead, make a carport or pole barn, plop some solar panels on that, connect those to an inverter or charge controller, and plug that into the vehicle. It would gain more electricity overall that can be used for the vehicle compared to a Frenel lens series, and it won't fry the cat when he or she plops down by the car for an afternoon nap and the sunbeam shifts, or the vehicle moves back and Pirelli processes Fluffy.
Even better, since the vehicle is likely at an office, add a battery bank. Then, the vehicle can charge a night via just the stored electricity, or a combination of that and mains power.
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won't fry the cat
That's not a bug, it's a feature! How else do I keep the neighbor's cat off my paint job?
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> and it won't fry the cat when he or she plops down by the car for an afternoon nap and the sunbeam shifts,
Although, that would be really funny.
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Other than the no-plug aspect, why even bother with this?
Simple.
Driving electric cars now isn't like a lot of people think. You get in your car with your ~80 mile range, and you just go about your day. When you happen to park where there's a public charger, you top off while you're in the grocery store or watching a movie. Your current ~80 mile range either gets pushed back up to 80, or you get a few miles added onto it. You do not drive from charger to charger.
Having a solar panel on the roof does exactly what the chargers littered around town do -- they ext
Re:Do not stare at Fresnel with remaining eye (Score:4, Insightful)
You do not drive from charger to charger.
As a leaf owner, you know this isn't true.
You know you never get into your car without a thought about where your next charger is, you avoid any trips that even put you close to your maximum range. Your mind is very much concerned with where chargers are.
And I'd bet you have access to another gas powered car which you use for anything even close to your maximum range.
Re:Do not stare at Fresnel with remaining eye (Score:5, Informative)
As a leaf owner, you know this isn't true.
There's 500+ chargers in my city. I know that in nearly 7,000 miles of electric driving that I've never been more than 5 miles away from a charger. [To be precise, I was, by Google Maps, 5.1 miles away from a charger on Christmas day, when visiting my folks in their retirement community.] I drive places, and I plug in when a public charger is convenient. I took a look at where I drove before I made my decision to get one - and I found that my needs were served by the range offered plus some occasional mileage bumps by public chargers.
There's a week or two after you get your Leaf that you have range anxiety. Once you get to the end of those first few weeks without running out of electricity, you know that unless you're going somewhere strange, your 80 mile range (plus occasional bumps from public chargers) gets the job done.
In-city, 35-mph driving gets you way more than 80, but my real-world, mostly-freeway gets me about 84 -- 3.9miles per kWh.]
And I'd bet you have access to another gas powered car which you use for anything even close to your maximum range.
I drove to Albuquerque last month. I rented a car.
Look: Some people drive in places and in ways where a Leaf isn't a practical vehicle for them. They shouldn't buy one. I'm not one of those people.
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Yeah, and the option to run out of juice and so you leave your car in the lot and go see a movie then drive to the charging station seems pretty nice.
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There will also be loss of range from the added weight and possibly aero drag associated with the panel and support circuits. Nothing is free.
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Sure.
Don't drive 140,000 miles with a penny in your ash tray. [xkcd.com]
The article is still pretty sparse on details. The solar on a Prius, for example, just powers ancillary systems, and obviously has *some* cost over just not having one.
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They left out that the extra charging would only be at peak. The sun does move so unless you have a tracking mirror you will have the spot moving all over the place.
Oh Ford this is must the 21st century version of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon [wikipedia.org]
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Other than the no-plug aspect, why even bother with this? Instead, make a carport or pole barn, plop some solar panels on that, connect those to an inverter or charge controller, and plug that into the vehicle. It would gain more electricity overall that can be used for the vehicle compared to a Frenel lens series, and it won't fry the cat when he or she plops down by the car for an afternoon nap and the sunbeam shifts, or the vehicle moves back and Pirelli processes Fluffy.
I have a colleague who has two electric cars (a Leaf and a RAV 4) and does this with the solar panels on his roof. The Fresnel lens saves a little conversion loss, but at a reduction of system availability for power production as well.
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I wonder how many people are going to actually install the car-port?
Most people who buy hybrids do it so they can drive solo in the commuter lane, so I expect this car will spend its entire life running off its gasoline backup engine.
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Most people who buy hybrids do it so they can drive solo in the commuter lane, so I expect this car will spend its entire life running off its gasoline backup engine.
That expired in California a few years ago. Now you have to have a full electric to drive solo in the carpool lane, or pay a few bucks via transponder if you're on one of the roads that allows that.
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Like Chevy did with the Volt, where the still lose money on every single sale, and most users still run on its gas engine 80% of the time.
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Or perhaps this is a car show prototype that will never see production.
The Engineers know it's a bad idea, but it's still great marketing.
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It's actually amazing how seemingly obvious stuff can get missed on these kinds of large multi-year projects and huge teams of reasonably smart people.
Sometimes momentum causes things to plow right through logic. Anyone who has worked on a large project for a big company has probably seen this.
I don't have a specific opinion in this case, but I guess my point is not to assume that a huge team of competent people can't collectively make a really big and obvious mistake. History is loaded with products that s
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Not funny, stupid.
Parabolic reflectors have fixed focus points.
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I'm more worried about it incinerating my dog.
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My thoughts exactly.
All six people who actually want to put up this monstrosity in their yard will be have their fire insurance go up, their neighbors bitching, their zoning commission objecting and the fire marshal knocking on their door.
It looks to me that Ford was trying strenuously to avoid collection and storage systems that might integrate into existing buildings.
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If you drive to work in LA where it takes more than an hour to get to or from work, you'd want to plug in.
Why would you need to charge if after driving 2 miles?
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The radio drained the battery
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You mean the small 12v battery that most of these cars have?
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If you drive to work in LA where it takes more than an hour to get to or from work, you'd want to plug in.
Why would you need to charge if after driving 2 miles?
You think you're joking...
I have to drive to work (about 35 miles each way) temporarily in LA, and it's about 1.5 hours there, 1.5 to 2 hours home. I just got a Cmax hybrid (with the little battery, not the Energi) and because I live in the San Gabriel Valley I can almost EV all the way to DTLA (it's all downhill) and get there with a full charge. It can easily take 45 minutes to an hour to do the ~10 miles or so to get to and through DTLA. After that it's much quicker. The gas motor runs on the way hom
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This would also help if you had to wait in a ferry line
I think you missed the point - if you're stopped in traffic, or stopped in a queue, an electric car should consume zero power. (Or essentially zero - small draw for the radio/instruments and brake lights, but nothing for forward motion, since you're not moving).
So a 2-mile commute should consume pretty much the same battery power, no matter if those two miles took you 2 minutes or 2 hours to travel.
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.... no matter how much aircon or heating you use?
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Didn't read the headline or article correctly did you? The car will come with a carport (open garage) that you park the car under. While parked the carport/garage will contain a lens as its roof which will concentrate the light onto a small spot on the roof.
Re:Fresnel lens, concentrate about 10x the energy? (Score:4, Insightful)
If this is the case, seems like it'd make more sense to leave the carport out of the picture, keep the lens (put it in your yard somewhere?), and move the solar panels from the car to below the lens.
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The car has 1.5m2 of solar panels, the lens would need to be 15m2. That's only 5x3m, about that size of a carport. My double garage is about 8x6m - 48m2.
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I doubt that they're going full nonimaging optics [wikipedia.org] in the carport, although I could well be wrong. But that's mainly to make tracking easier (or unnecessary); practically, there just isn't any way you're going to get more than one sunlight-square-meter of power out of a square meter of roof, period.
As car concepts go, this one's a bit sillier than most. But once photovoltaics get cheap and robust enough to be used as a car finish, why the hell not?
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People who have to park on the street likely can't afford an electric car anyway.
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Read: "I live in a city that has limited parking space."
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On the earth, its about 1366 watts per square metre....Lets assume day is 12 hours and night is 12 hours, so we get 1024 watts for 12 hours
That's 1366W/square meter at the top of the atmosphere (i.e. in orbit). Isolation at ground level is considerably less.
Also, the 1366W/m^2 figure is the mean isolation of the entire planet. It already accounts for it being night in half the world.
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The 1366 W/m^2 (plus or minus a bit) is the instantaneous incoming radiant power density on a surface at 1 AU, not the insolation. There's no accounting for day/night in it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_constant )
The insolation is the time integral of that, and does account for the day night cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation )
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They already said the 1.5m2 of solar panels put out 300W of power in the summary. That's 20% efficiency at a nominal 1000w/m2.
I don't know why you're trying to do horribly wrong back of the envelope calculations when the data is already in the summary.
Also, If you're driving a car for 1 hour averaging 50 horsepower, you're either driving wrong, driving a truck or driving up a very, very long hill. The Tesla Model S has a 60kw/h battery, has a range over 300km and a 310kw engine. Going by your assumption tha
All I Want (Score:3)
Is something that would power a fan so that the car doesn't turn into an oven during the day.
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The infrastructure for electric vehicles has a very long payoff, so absolutely it'll cost more than electricity. This thing might generate a penny an hour worth of electricity for a third of the day...
So, it's about choosing your priorities.