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Power Transportation

Tesla's Cybertruck Will Have Solar Charging Options (cnet.com) 183

An anonymous reader quotes CNET's Roadshow: The Tesla Cybertruck will have a solar charging option that can extend its driving range 15 miles a day, Chief Executive Elon Musk said Friday. On top of that, "fold-out solar wings" could increase that extra range to 30 to 40 miles per day, he said.

"Would love this to be self-powered," Musk tweeted of the Cybertruck solar charging option, adding that the average car in the United States travels 30 miles per day...

Photovoltaic panels to charge car batteries haven't been a big deal on cars so far, since they require a lot of surface area to generate significant power, and even small, aerodynamic electric vehicles demand a lot of that power. However, solar panel efficiency has been gradually increasing, the Cybertruck has a lot of surface area and the photovoltaic industry has been advancing solar cells that can be built into transparent glass -- just the thing for a transparent Cybertruck roof.

Solar charging could also be a nice way for Tesla to make Cybertrucks more profitable.

TechCrunch notes that the trucks will be made from the same stainless steel alloy that SpaceX is using for its Starship -- and that Tesla received 146,000 reservations for the vehicle in just the first two days since its announcement. "Of those, 41% picked the most expensive tri-motor option and 42% of future customers chose the dual motor version. The remaining 17% picked the cheapest single-motor model."
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Tesla's Cybertruck Will Have Solar Charging Options

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  • My use case. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Sunday November 24, 2019 @02:44PM (#59449142)

    Vacation: Take the truck up to the cabin in the off-grid wilderness. So far up in the mountains or the desert that it takes over 50% charge to get there. Go fishing or hiking for a week while the truck sits there gaining charge in daylight hours. Drive home in comfort with 20% of the range restored.

    Or, if that isn't needed, use the AC outlet for stuff.

    Works for me.

    • Or just being a small gas powered generator. If the weather turns you're stuck. Solar is great until you -need- power -now-.
      • If it could just run the climate control on a hot sunny day it would be worthwhile IMO, but it looked like the CyberTrk had a big glass roof, and I really liked that. Would hate to give that up. If they could do solar cells on the roll up cargo cover I'd be all in.

    • Vacation: Take the truck up to the cabin in the off-grid wilderness. So far up in the mountains or the desert that it takes over 50% charge to get there. Go fishing or hiking for a week while the truck sits there gaining charge in daylight hours. Drive home in comfort with 20% of the range restored.

      Or, if that isn't needed, use the AC outlet for stuff.

      Works for me.

      I can bring solar panels along with me without this truck. I can have them on a camper even. Hauling around solar panels all the time when I only need them occasionally doesn't make a lot of sense.

      When I'm not camping, or out in open space, You probably can't use them. No room to fold them out in parking lots.

    • Vacation: Take the truck up to the cabin in the off-grid wilderness.

      Tesla could stage a great PR gag with this. Drive the truck coast to coast across the USA using ONLY the power generated by the solar panels. Plugging in is not allowed. So that would be 40 miles per day . . . from small town to small town.

      Dressed in an outer space alien costume.

      They could make a micro reality series out of this, showing the reaction of the locals as they see an alien crawl out of the Cyber Trunk.

    • by Trogre ( 513942 )

      If you're driving up into the mountains, then you can probably regen all the way back down, making the solar panel nice, but not essential.

  • This should come standard for cars in sunny countries!
    Even not Transformer-butt-ugly ones.

    Have the roof, hood, back and side panels look like a completely normal car body, with paint and everything...
    but allow opening them up (safely locked by default, just like folding roofs, of course), to reveal solar cells sandwiched in-between! Voila, large surface area for solar power!

    Of course if you only drive between home and work, just plug it in like normal, and save the cost.

  • Damn it. Stop calling the bloody thing a starship. Unless it's got a warp drive, jump drive, hyper drive, cryogenic freeze tubes and a way to undo the ice damage at thaw time, or a rotating drum with a closed ecosystem that can sustain several generations; it's not a goddamned starship!

    • It blows up like the warp core overloaded, so it's got that going for it.

    • by wbcr ( 6342592 )
      "Same stainless steel SpaceX is using for Starship" - it's a genius sales pitch even if the "Starship" doesn't fly to stars (tbh not even to orbit or space yet). Now what if I told you it's also the same $3/kg stainless steel that is being used to make cooking pots?
  • Just like the swappable batteries and the charging stations powered entirely by over an acre of solar panels. The bullshit just keeps on coming.
  • It could have magic fairy dust charging options, but with only a touch screen to drive with, no way would I consider this. I need knobs and buttons and switches when I drive. I'm not going to be staring down at a series of menus on a touchscreen while I'm trying to drive.
    • It could have magic fairy dust charging options, but with only a touch screen to drive with, no way would I consider this. I need knobs and buttons and switches when I drive. I'm not going to be staring down at a series of menus on a touchscreen while I'm trying to drive.

      Clearly you've never driven a Tesla. That's not how it works. Go drive one. Gain some knowledge, and then come back here and eat some crow while you tell what you learned.

  • Tesla probably went all cyber punk because Rivian already makes the Model3 version of the F150. https://rivian.com/r1t/ [rivian.com]

    110V and compressed air too. Even shows it with a bunch of camping/offroading photos.

  • by wolfheart111 ( 2496796 ) on Sunday November 24, 2019 @06:56PM (#59449844)
    all day every day... forever. And not pretty women either, mostly the burly macho bearded type. And dare have a bad day where you give them the finger...
  • by Nocturrne ( 912399 ) on Sunday November 24, 2019 @08:50PM (#59450058)

    What really makes me sad is all of the rednecks saying the Tesla truck is ugly. Seriously, take a look at the huge, oversized, plastic/fake chrome e-peen maximizers from Ford, GM, and Dodge. I am an American and I am embarrassed that American car companies have just been redecorating the plastic on 60yr old drivetrains for decades. It's like those giant stereo systems from the 80s with a huge plastic case and a tiny little PCB on the inside - just giant unnecessary boxes of air.

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

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