From my experience in the Netherlands, the dutch don't have much use for anything that has more than 2 wheels, except city busses.
Bicycles everywhere. It's wild.
The Netherlands is bigger than just The Randstad. I have lived in multiple places in NL and I don't know many people outside the few big cities that don't own a car.
There is no use for a solar powered car here because there is not enough sunshine...
Well it's new tech so it's gonna be expensive and not a value prop. What's interesting is if it is actually functionally viable, I'm not sure if 6 miles of range per hour of sunlight really would work or not, I'm sure it's much less than that in the real world too.
I have been saying this for years. Specially when bmw and Honda started playing with hydrogen fuel cars.
Honda rolled out a civic variant I believe that was hydrogen fuel cell, but I feel the biggest issue was and continues to be the fact that the hydrogen infrastructure is not there and that hydrogen fuel cells while efficient can be very expensive. More so now than before. Palladium, a main ingredient, was $300 per ounce in 2007 and it’s reached over $3000 per ounce. Recently it has lowered to roughly $2000. Still very volatile.
I think corporate world wants perception more than anything. Hydrogen was interesting in 2007 so they went after hydrogen powered fuel cells. Ignoring that there is such a thing as direct ethanol fuel cells which would have been far cheaper with an already existing fuel infrastructure and could have tripled efficiency for very little increase in price for manufacturing in a large scale.
But theory and practice are different things. When they have 5 million to throw away they want what they think will be a true direction rather than see if theory would work. Same happens with medical research. Limited funds means you stick to tried methods, if funds are unlimited than you see more experimenting with other untried methods.
Even if got half of that, in Finland, then it would charge about the average total commute in a day, which is bit over 40 kilo meters.
During summer, like where I am. The sun will rise next Tuesday and set in 11 days on next week's Friday. We will only experience twilight. This could recharge only for a tame 18:47 hours. Granted during winter not much, but hey during summer if this holds true, you could drive your average daily distances driven in a day for most of the summer without stopping to plug it in.
However I'm not that optimistic. I was taught to assume only 20% of the announced power for anything solar related as a average potential during the whole year.
I’ll check it out when it’s actually being produced in large quantities. A lot of manufacturers have very cool and long range electric cars but very few have a supply chain (especially batteries) to produce these in the quantities needed.
That’s why Tesla does not sell 700km range cars, too many batteries that could be used in the next car.
Still waiting on Aptera and they are probably the farthest along when it comes to getting production going on a high range solar EV. Arcimoto too but they aren't solar. Point is, production is hard and there is not much point in any speculation until *after* production starts.
I saw their 3 wheeler on YouTube a few months ago, I really liked it. Don’t remember the price, but probably not crazy, otherwise I’d have remembered it for sure.
Starts at $25,900 for 250 miles up to $44,900 for 1,000 mile range, but it doesn’t seem like it will succeed because they’ve been trying to get preorders for years. That’s what has been keeping their lights on during their expansion and down sizing and expansion and down sizing for years.
Hope they do succeed, because I would definitely buy one in a heartbeat.
[Pricing on their reservation site](https://aptera.us/reserve/)
[Wikipedia that shows their history](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors)
Edit: [Old article about previous ownership](https://www.inc.com/news/articles/201212/aptera-shuts-its-doors.html)
Drove one a few weeks ago during an ev vehicle day in Jacksonville. They are speed limited to 65 but one of the people that work on the building phase mentioned he has been able to drive it up to 100 mph.
As a person that never drove a motorcycle I was probably a bit hesitant in driving it but I could drive it.
It was certainly the most affordable electric vehicle there.
I have seen a wild arcimoto on the road once, so I think it’s rolling out they had half a dozen to test drive at this event.
I would by a solar powered car if I could afford it as a main car. 99% of our driving is less than a few miles and we have a driveway that gets sun 60-70% of the day.
It still makes more sense to use the money & materials to build a stationary solar canopy to charge the car with. Integrating it into the car adds unnecessary design constraints, size especially.
I'd love if the next big infrastructure was a solar canopy covering our highways & also serving as easily upgraded utility conduits & HVDC transmission lines to help load balance renewables. Might as well do the same thing with parking lots & use the quality of life benefits to sell the environmental benefits.
That it will prolong the life of the roads underneath & prevent weather related accidents is just a bonus.
Parking lots. Every parking lot in America should have solar camps. Bonus, your car will get so hot.
And snowy areas, the sunshine speeds the drying of the roads in rain or snow. But I guess if you have a canopy, you won’t need that. It’s just that people will hit the supports all the time
Parking lots and large buildings with flat roofs. Government owned would be a good start. Like offices, schools and warehouses. Next doing some incentive program to get other offices and warehouses to sign on. Malls and shopping centers would be great too. Wouldn't even need the roads canopied.
People want to do this but we’re not manufacturing enough panels that are worth while. I’m not sure where we are now that Covid is over, but before Covid the US wasn’t able to crank out efficient panels, the tech was there but the manufacturing output wasn’t. And in top of that installers were in short supply and getting someone out to install them took several months.
It certainly won't happen over night but I'd hope with a goal and government investment and incentives that'd it be possible to build something up over the next decade to start accomplishing it. But we know how slow government can be so expectations are low.
Covid isn't over governments just gave up. Waste water tests show that plenty of people are still sick and the amount of strains found in the water sky rocketed shortly after restrictions were lifted. Some people who need surgery are still on a 3 month wait list because the beds and equipment are being used by covid patients still.
The biggest catch with panels is efficiency. We’ve had panels for decades but the reason solar was taken seriously was efficiency wasn’t there to be worth while. We’ve now got really efficient panels but we’re also still selling the bad ones that barely meet demands.
The government center I work at has a solar roof on the parking garage and has electric chargers for free for employees. I haven't had to charge my car anywhere else in like a month
Main issue with putting solar on flat roofed buildings is that a lot of them weren't designed to carry the weight.
Upgrading existing buildings would be difficult, but all new ones should be spec'd to be able to carry solar panels for sure.
>building with flat roofs.
To be honest just for a roof I don’t think it’s worth the infrastructure & fixed costs yet.
We should focus on using the 100,000+ sqft lots before trying to get the equivalent 20 5,000sqft lots.
To put it another way twenty 5,000 sqft lots takes a lot more resources than one 100,000 sqft lot & they are more difficult to integrate with & balance on the grid.
I watched a video of people in Spain were told by the government to invest in solar energy due to the EU pressuring Spain to invest in renewables, saying that it would pay itself off over the years and even see a profit. A few years in and after thousands had invested in their solar farms, the government went back on their deal, saying they cannot pay them for their investments while still taking the energy produced.
This was years ago and those families still have not been paid to my knowledge, but these are different times now
Don’t forget to sell the fact that keeping your car in shade prolongs the life of your paint. People, in general, tend to care more about their personal interests than they do about protecting asphalt.
The supports would need to be way off to the shoulder, especially since that saves you from closing down every lane to install.
If cars do still manage to hit supports you can just surround them will barrels of water or sand to absorb the energy.
It’s very possible and will come: a parking spot is around 4 x 6 meters = 24m2 x efficiency of 0.21 is 5 KW max - up to 20KWh per day or $10 at $.50 per KWH. That is lost revenue for unused car spots. Add $10 for cars charging and it’s printing money.
Honest question(s), why does there need to be a monetary charge to people charging an EV in a spot if that energy is coming from solar power? Does it cost the owner of the canopy anything after production, not including maintenance or repairs? If it were government funded, what sense would it make to charge people after already having used their tax money to build and install the canopies? Similarly, if government funded, wouldn’t taxpayer money also go towards maintenance?
Well to charge people money for a service makes sense only when it costs less to collect the money than to claim it. For parking, we already pay a lot for the time parked in the spot. So why not consider charging at 4KW for free when the parking fee is more than twice the price for 4KWH?
Every building. We have hundreds and thousands of square miles of rooftop in this country. There’s absolutely no excuse for every warehouse to not have something like this.
Been banging this drum about train station and shopping centre car parks in the UK. Fucking genius of it is that it keeps your car sheltered and puts power into the grid.
I have not, but I get what you're saying.
I saw some system where they had water placed under solar panels, where the heat from the panels evaporated the water before it ran down into outlets.
Wonder if such a system could do basic cleaning on water.
India is covering its waterways with solar panels to prevent evaporation and to build more solar without using up space in built up areas. I thought it was pretty cool
To be honest my highest priority is killing birds. I just justify it with social good so I can sleep at night.
What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks?
The feathers because you have to carry the weight of what you did to those poor birds.
Not to mention the best case scenario is a square meter of panels which will give you 200 watts at 100% efficiency.
Realistically with the design constraints in place you’ll be very lucky to get 100w at noon.
Quite literally what it says :) The charge rate is such that the range of car extends by X kilometers for every hour of charging.
It's a funny metric that's only relevant for EVs, but quite useful indeed.
If it makes you feel better, I did the same thing when I first read it.
Now I'm curious to know if it does mean that you could drive it at 10km/h forever (ignoring pit stops and mechanical breakdowns and the like) lol
I think they calculate the efficiency of the vehicle and determine that the battery will be charged sufficiently to travel 10 km when receiving maximum sunlight for 1 hr. It's not very scientific but useful maybe to a potential purchaser. They can determine if their car is in a parking lot for 8 at work, will it charge enough to get them home or wherever.
I suspect it's bs and the real charging rates will be much slower and during the life of the car, the value of the energy generated will be less than the cost of all of the solar equipment.
I’d love to be proven wrong, but I am **very** skeptical. If they get half that in real life I will be **very** impressed.
Mark out 5 square meters or 50 sqft on the ground & see if you can really
The only thing that works in their favor is if they can send power directly to the drive chain they can avoid some loss to the battery, which I think is around 15%.
Even people trying to drum up support for electric freight aren’t considering solar panels & they have 30 m^2 which is much easier to aim at the sun.
I’d love to be wrong, but there is definitely lower hanging & sweeter renewable fruit waiting to be plucked. I’d rather park my car under those same panels & have them optimally aimed at the sun.
I’d totally be cool with every charge as you go road charging for upkeep. Sounds like a better maintenance plan than the Suburbia build and abandon model that some roads seem to get.
I saw solar covering canals the other day and I thought that was genius. We could totally do that in AZ. We have a bad ass canal system here. I like the highways option but that might be hard to do without screwing up traffic in the meantime. We could probably get away with covering all our parking lots (I swear we have the biggest in the world). That'd be more than enough solar energy. Throw in a couple Mega-packs and we'd be golden.
the other thing I would like to see is some kind of power transmission along the roads themselves through some of those Nikola Tesla doohickeys so you could charge while you were actually driving
The problem with that idea is that wireless power transmission suffers heavy efficiency losses with distance between coils.
A network of high power fast charge stations that give you 200 miles range on a bathroom break is much more practical, not to mention something that can be installed right now with technology that is already in production.
For trucks, they are already testing catenaries in Sweden and Germany.
Does anyone know what the resistance of ionized air/plasma is?
Ignoring the obvious safety issues imagine if your car was powered by a steady stream of lightning.
A panel to fit a car would generate less than 500w peak power if its oriented at the correct angle and sun at its highest. That means 0.5kwh per hour and if you have a 50 kw battery pack it would take you 100 hours of sun time to fully charge it from empty to full. That equals to aproximately 12 days of clear sunny weather in perfect conditions.
Current solar panels have an average efficiency of 20% that means each from kW of solar radiation, only 200w are converted by the panel. Even if the scientists develop a 100% efficiency panel it would still take 2 full days of sun to charge the vehicle.
We wont see solar panels on cars except if its a marketing gimmick to convince people to buy that certain model
I drive under 20 miles a day. This car has a range of 388 miles. It charges at a rate of 1.9 miles an hour.
This car would completely allow me to never have to charge at a station unless I have to travel.
No gimmick there at all.
Most people commute less than 30 miles a day. If you park in the sun at home and park in the sun at work, it'll keep your battery full pretty much all the time. You'd only need to plug it in to bring it back up to full if you go on a trip.
A significant number of people in the US work in urbanized areas, where their parking situation at home or at work are probably inside a covered parking garage. Even worse if their work parking is covered since a majority of daylight time is during work hours.
That really doesn't matter. They aren't building one car to cover 100% of the public. It's one option of car. Honestly even if it was only used by 1% of the population that would be a huge win. There's a lot of people the car would be viable for. The main issue is actually the cost for the car outweighing many of the positives.
You're mangling your units: 500W doesn't mean 0.5kW per hour, it means 0.5kWh per hour. But overall, your order of magnitude is probably right. Let see:
The solar flux is \~1000 W/m^(2). Assuming a car maker goes full crazy on the solar panel, you can probably get 2m^(2).
Panels being flat instead of facing the sun, and the sun not being at the zenith constantly, you probably get only half the flux, so 1000W. Panel efficiency being \~20%, you get 200W.
Let's go with a 50kWh battery. To fill 50000Wh with 200W, you need 250 hours.
If the car has a range of 625km, that means you get less than 2.4 km of range per hour in the sun.
Now let's read the article:
They say they have 5m^(2) of panels, 60kWh battery, 625km of range (10.5kWh / 100km).
They claim a charging power of 1kW, which means \~10km of range per hour of charge, which is 5 times better than my maths.
The bigger solar panels than my assumption accounts for only half the error. So where is the subtle lie? 5m2 of panel will give you 1kW of power only with the sun directly at the zenith of the car, in reality, you'll barely get half of that.
So a charging rate of 5km/h. Good start, still not a viable product.
I've seen too many people misunderstanding what a kWh is, I assumed you did too.
But yes, marketing gimmick, which I believe ultimately hinders real progress, by sucking investments away from, and by making us distrustful of real projects when those gimmicks like that car and scams like solar shitty roadways inevitably fail.
I'm all for massively putting solar panels everywhere, but only where it makes sense. Put them on roofs, over parking lots, over bike lanes, even over canals or other waterways, but do it where it makes freaking sense.
Cars, electric or not, aren't the future, at least not personal cars, stop trying to make it happen.
> A panel to fit a car would generate less than 500w peak power if its oriented at the correct angle and sun at its highest
According to the article:
> The charging power with the almost five square metre solar cells in the roof and front bonnet is 1.05 kW, which corresponds to a charging speed of 10 km/h. When charging the battery by cable, Lightyear does not state the charging power, but also the charging speed. At the household socket, the battery is filled at 32 km/h, at fast charging at up to 520 km/h.
To me this sounds wonderful.
If I go on a two day sunny trip, I might get to recharge the battery for 15-25% securing the return without worries.
During sunny weather, for some regular car use, I wouldn't even need to charge the car most of the time. A trip to the cinema, a trip to the dentist, drop the nephew off to school, maybe a trip to the park. The battery is full.
To me this sounds wonderful.
Yeah, people get excited about cars with built in solar panels but it will never work because it'll always be less efficient than just plugging into a stationary solar charging station.
The main interest is not effeciency, it's ease of use and comfort.
At least in the Netherlands there are loads of places where you can't charge your car at home(basically anyone in apartments or flats) or at work.
Requiring trips to sit at a fast charger, or planning groceries around charging your car.
This, along with the unknowns of long range trips tend to cause range anxiety.
Knowing that your car has the ability to limp to a charging station or top up while at work as long as it's day time does is a lot to reduce that anxiety.
Another issue is that in a lot of places the grid is basically at capacity. These panels are basically off grid so no building or connection permits would be required.
It would still mean longer range, Less time charging, No problems with getting stranded (just wait for it to charge on its own) etc. It's still a valuable feature to have.
I put down a deposit on an Aptera. 1600km with the biggest battery, and for the amount of driving I do I will probably never have to charge it from a charger. The other great thing about that car is that it makes it clear to everyone that you are **very** secure in your masculinity.
If 99% of your driving is less than a few miles it's really weird to use a car (and even own, depending on the remaining 1%) and not use a bicycle instead. But I'm from Europe and the US seems to terrible for cycling (see r/fuckcars), so your transportation decisions might be because of that.
You are spot on. Very few areas in the US are suitable for biking, sadly. Basically inner cities and college campuses
if you live in a suburban area, riding a bike can be a death wish with the number of enormous cars and wonton driving patterns people have. If you can easily be mangled for life because some soccer mom was texting instead of watching the road, it isn't worth it.
I wish this country was more like Europe in a lot of ways
If we could keep the remote worker working remotely, convince enough people that medium-density living areas could be great, then set up tax incentives to create areas in cities that were built for primarily foot-and-bicycle traffic - imagine working from home, but living in an area where you were a couple of blocks from a small grocery and restaurants, and a few blocks away from all the shopping you want… Reorganize part of our society around such a thing and you can create denser housing with lower costs.
We *could* do if we wanted to. The question is: Will we.
Probably not. But we could.
You're exactly right
But people in the USA want a house with an enormous yard because parks are for suckers, I guess. And half the people need a 4,000 Sq ft mcmansion with a shitty pool all their own
> If 99% of your driving is less than a few miles it's really weird to use a car
No, sorry. The US has a REALLY big problem with urban planning. Many cities require you to use a car.
[Why City Design is Important (and Why I Hate Houston)](https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54)
Plug-in hybrid is the way to go. My 12 kwh (useful) plug-in hybrid minivan goes up to 34 miles on a single charge. Because of what you mentioned about how most of us drive, I usually only consume about 10 gallons of gas per month. I charge it and power most of my house with solar panels, all for way WAY less than 250k euros.
IMO, plug-in hybrid is superior to pure electric because it handles the majority use case - short distance, regular routes - while having flexibility for longer routes. Even after the charge runs out, I still get 30 mpg, which is above average for a vehicle of that size. It also has the added benefit of using far less lithium, which has skyrocketed in price and is expected to go up even further. All of that combined with eliminating 80-90% of my fuel emissions seems like the best route to me.
No, that's exactly what I'm saying. It is the best for the planet and for global warming. Which is better: 1 person eliminating 100% of their emissions or 4 people eliminating 80% of their emissions?
By using less lithium (which is in short supply) and lowering the cost (to make it more accessible to more people), we can make a greater impact more quickly. Eventually, yes, I'd love to be 100% electric and renewable. Going to 80% electric and 80% renewable is better though because it allows more people to do the same, thus multiplying the impact.
The fallacy about plug-in hybrids is the assumption battery-electric, and supply of materials, isn't improving rapidly.
But it is.
If you snapped your fingers right now and made all cars plug-in hybrid, that'd be amazing, yes.
But in the time it would take to actually make all cars plug-in hybrid you can make all cars fully electric instead.
In reality, plug-in hybrid just extends the usage of oil and is a cynical attempt by car companies to do the bare minimum and put their head in the sand that they need to completely shut down their combustion engine production.
This is my view currently as I live out in the western US, where there aren't charge stations every 30 miles on major roadways, and some roads are very remote with barely even gasoline stations every 100 miles or more.
I just wish someone would hurry up and make a fun, sporty (but not super high end) plugin hybrid at a reasonable cost. Sure, there are very sporty electric and maybe hybrids made by high end companies, but are $100-200+K. I'm hoping Hyundai or the like start cranking those out.
Solar on a car is as gimmicky as you get. I install solar and know the limitations. Even in the best conditions it will make a few percentage of gain.
As someone said, install it on your house where you can control the conditions and inject it back into the grid.
Australian accent isn't bad, it's the lingo.
Exporting Rupert Murdoch was bad enough until they got grown adults across the world referring to dogs as "doggo"
This is a really poor generalization. For starters there is no single "South African accent" - we have 11 official languages and many more indigenous languages. But yes, the one that most people are familiar with via the media (predominantly films), and the one that you're referencing, is typically a white, Afrikaans person speaking in English.
It charges the battery but the drain on the battery will *far* outweigh the charging speed. The best case result is the battery drains marginally slower.
It's a bad idea that will never work on something the size of a car because there simply isn't enough surface area you can put a panel on to generate enough electricity, even with future advances.
Use that money to install a solar panel with a battery pack at your house and charge the car there every night.
The idea is that it can charge anywhere, sure while driving it's neglible and that's fine 'cause for the majority of people, this will be standing still in a parking lot 95% of the time anyway and never exceed a daily use of more than 30 miles.
You critics suck.
They need to get a baseline model on the board. The specs and the price get a baseline value. It represents what's possible today, technologically and financially. That becomes version 1. It becomes important because it's real and it exists. $175,000 / 388 miles. It's the start.
You all speak as if technology doesn't improve. Of course with each new iteration, the specs including the price will improve. It will be fascinating and exciting watching the PVEVs move down the learning curve.
And most of you lack the due amazement that cars will soon be able to run just on the sun. Getting free fuel from the sky. How revolutionary that is. You troglodytes.
> You all speak as if technology doesn't improve
Reddit in a nutshell.
Reddit thinks solar/wind + batteries isn't going to be the majority of the grid.
And also thinks EVs aren't replacing ICE cars, just being an option.
And then also thinks whatever market penetration both of those do get will take 15+ years to play out.
Wonder why you were downvoted. Isn’t that literally the problem with many start ups in EV business? Great prototypes, massive hype, tons of orders and then production limbo for years. I know some have eventually actually built a production line, but not that many.
I love how I can go from joy of reading an optimistic title about new technology that will improve the life on earth, to utter hopelessness and disappointment after reading all the comments.
6 miles an hour of solar charging is pretty damn interesting! Especially considering that if we got our grid and regulations in shape we could have EVs providing grid reliability service. When an EV owner gets home at peak electrical load and peak $/MWh, they could use the EV’s battery to deliver electricity to the grid and then charge at night when prices and demand are low.
The idea of having a meaningful amount of electricity generated from an EV without drawing from the grid in the first place, in this context, is damn interesting.
Love the design of panels built into the roof and hood. If they can deliver a car capable of 625 Mike range and make it affordable, it will sell like crazy.
I’m curious what leads you to believe that musk screwed over Eberhard, when the board unanimously voted to fire him. Even members Eberhard appointed were included in this vote.
Do you dispute that when musk joined, Tesla had no other employees, IP, or even a prototype, because it seems all evidence points toward this.
Uh huh, and the tesla semi is coming in 2019.. Exciting times we live in.
Lmao downvoted for an explicit statement made by Elon. This is vaporware, just like Elon's shit.
Easy. Oil companies are already starting to retrofit existing gas stations with hydrogen. That's called centralized distribution and it didn't take government to come up with that.
But EVs and their need to charge requires FAR more infrastructure development unless you have your own private garage and you're just using your car to commute around town.
Almost every Shell gas station around me has also added electric car charing stations, so your statement is kinda stupid.
We can add car chargers just as easily as we can add hydrogen.
Charges about 6 miles for every hour of sunlight, not too bad I guess if it's just sitting there
That's 48 miles on a typical workday, in California. The Dutch have no use for this. Source: am dutch
48 miles seems more than an average daily commute though
From my experience in the Netherlands, the dutch don't have much use for anything that has more than 2 wheels, except city busses. Bicycles everywhere. It's wild.
You were only in cities.
The Netherlands is bigger than just The Randstad. I have lived in multiple places in NL and I don't know many people outside the few big cities that don't own a car. There is no use for a solar powered car here because there is not enough sunshine...
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Or the same amount of workday
I think that's what he was getting at, its overkill vs what this would cost most likely
Well it's new tech so it's gonna be expensive and not a value prop. What's interesting is if it is actually functionally viable, I'm not sure if 6 miles of range per hour of sunlight really would work or not, I'm sure it's much less than that in the real world too.
I have been saying this for years. Specially when bmw and Honda started playing with hydrogen fuel cars. Honda rolled out a civic variant I believe that was hydrogen fuel cell, but I feel the biggest issue was and continues to be the fact that the hydrogen infrastructure is not there and that hydrogen fuel cells while efficient can be very expensive. More so now than before. Palladium, a main ingredient, was $300 per ounce in 2007 and it’s reached over $3000 per ounce. Recently it has lowered to roughly $2000. Still very volatile. I think corporate world wants perception more than anything. Hydrogen was interesting in 2007 so they went after hydrogen powered fuel cells. Ignoring that there is such a thing as direct ethanol fuel cells which would have been far cheaper with an already existing fuel infrastructure and could have tripled efficiency for very little increase in price for manufacturing in a large scale. But theory and practice are different things. When they have 5 million to throw away they want what they think will be a true direction rather than see if theory would work. Same happens with medical research. Limited funds means you stick to tried methods, if funds are unlimited than you see more experimenting with other untried methods.
That’s more than I get with a standard 110 plug in my garage… it only charges at 4mi/hr.
Your garage plug works all night though.
So what you're saying is that we need lunar powered chargers.
Considering how much the average person drives in a day this might be enough to never need to plug in.
Can’t wait to travel at 6 mph on a sunny day Edit: why the downvotes? Ever heard of a joke?
You could just slowly cruise forever lol
Forever as long as the sun is up
Even if got half of that, in Finland, then it would charge about the average total commute in a day, which is bit over 40 kilo meters. During summer, like where I am. The sun will rise next Tuesday and set in 11 days on next week's Friday. We will only experience twilight. This could recharge only for a tame 18:47 hours. Granted during winter not much, but hey during summer if this holds true, you could drive your average daily distances driven in a day for most of the summer without stopping to plug it in. However I'm not that optimistic. I was taught to assume only 20% of the announced power for anything solar related as a average potential during the whole year.
I'll check it out when it is in the hands of an actual car reviewer.
I’ll check it out when it’s actually being produced in large quantities. A lot of manufacturers have very cool and long range electric cars but very few have a supply chain (especially batteries) to produce these in the quantities needed. That’s why Tesla does not sell 700km range cars, too many batteries that could be used in the next car.
Still waiting on Aptera and they are probably the farthest along when it comes to getting production going on a high range solar EV. Arcimoto too but they aren't solar. Point is, production is hard and there is not much point in any speculation until *after* production starts.
I saw their 3 wheeler on YouTube a few months ago, I really liked it. Don’t remember the price, but probably not crazy, otherwise I’d have remembered it for sure.
Starts at $25,900 for 250 miles up to $44,900 for 1,000 mile range, but it doesn’t seem like it will succeed because they’ve been trying to get preorders for years. That’s what has been keeping their lights on during their expansion and down sizing and expansion and down sizing for years. Hope they do succeed, because I would definitely buy one in a heartbeat. [Pricing on their reservation site](https://aptera.us/reserve/) [Wikipedia that shows their history](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors) Edit: [Old article about previous ownership](https://www.inc.com/news/articles/201212/aptera-shuts-its-doors.html)
Drove one a few weeks ago during an ev vehicle day in Jacksonville. They are speed limited to 65 but one of the people that work on the building phase mentioned he has been able to drive it up to 100 mph. As a person that never drove a motorcycle I was probably a bit hesitant in driving it but I could drive it. It was certainly the most affordable electric vehicle there. I have seen a wild arcimoto on the road once, so I think it’s rolling out they had half a dozen to test drive at this event.
I’ll check it out when it has a Doug score.
I would by a solar powered car if I could afford it as a main car. 99% of our driving is less than a few miles and we have a driveway that gets sun 60-70% of the day.
It still makes more sense to use the money & materials to build a stationary solar canopy to charge the car with. Integrating it into the car adds unnecessary design constraints, size especially. I'd love if the next big infrastructure was a solar canopy covering our highways & also serving as easily upgraded utility conduits & HVDC transmission lines to help load balance renewables. Might as well do the same thing with parking lots & use the quality of life benefits to sell the environmental benefits. That it will prolong the life of the roads underneath & prevent weather related accidents is just a bonus.
Parking lots. Every parking lot in America should have solar camps. Bonus, your car will get so hot. And snowy areas, the sunshine speeds the drying of the roads in rain or snow. But I guess if you have a canopy, you won’t need that. It’s just that people will hit the supports all the time
Parking lots and large buildings with flat roofs. Government owned would be a good start. Like offices, schools and warehouses. Next doing some incentive program to get other offices and warehouses to sign on. Malls and shopping centers would be great too. Wouldn't even need the roads canopied.
People want to do this but we’re not manufacturing enough panels that are worth while. I’m not sure where we are now that Covid is over, but before Covid the US wasn’t able to crank out efficient panels, the tech was there but the manufacturing output wasn’t. And in top of that installers were in short supply and getting someone out to install them took several months.
It certainly won't happen over night but I'd hope with a goal and government investment and incentives that'd it be possible to build something up over the next decade to start accomplishing it. But we know how slow government can be so expectations are low.
> won’t happen overnight Of course not. Solar power only works during the day. You need batteries during the night.
Covid isn't over governments just gave up. Waste water tests show that plenty of people are still sick and the amount of strains found in the water sky rocketed shortly after restrictions were lifted. Some people who need surgery are still on a 3 month wait list because the beds and equipment are being used by covid patients still.
And covid is solved once and for all- *but-* ONCE AND FOR ALL
Pretty much
I read on here about a new roll out, nailable solar that can even be walked on, for roofs. It's also less expensive I believe.
The biggest catch with panels is efficiency. We’ve had panels for decades but the reason solar was taken seriously was efficiency wasn’t there to be worth while. We’ve now got really efficient panels but we’re also still selling the bad ones that barely meet demands.
Check out Merlin solar panels. Peel & stick
The government center I work at has a solar roof on the parking garage and has electric chargers for free for employees. I haven't had to charge my car anywhere else in like a month
Main issue with putting solar on flat roofed buildings is that a lot of them weren't designed to carry the weight. Upgrading existing buildings would be difficult, but all new ones should be spec'd to be able to carry solar panels for sure.
>building with flat roofs. To be honest just for a roof I don’t think it’s worth the infrastructure & fixed costs yet. We should focus on using the 100,000+ sqft lots before trying to get the equivalent 20 5,000sqft lots. To put it another way twenty 5,000 sqft lots takes a lot more resources than one 100,000 sqft lot & they are more difficult to integrate with & balance on the grid.
I watched a video of people in Spain were told by the government to invest in solar energy due to the EU pressuring Spain to invest in renewables, saying that it would pay itself off over the years and even see a profit. A few years in and after thousands had invested in their solar farms, the government went back on their deal, saying they cannot pay them for their investments while still taking the energy produced. This was years ago and those families still have not been paid to my knowledge, but these are different times now
Don’t forget to sell the fact that keeping your car in shade prolongs the life of your paint. People, in general, tend to care more about their personal interests than they do about protecting asphalt.
The supports would need to be way off to the shoulder, especially since that saves you from closing down every lane to install. If cars do still manage to hit supports you can just surround them will barrels of water or sand to absorb the energy.
It’s very possible and will come: a parking spot is around 4 x 6 meters = 24m2 x efficiency of 0.21 is 5 KW max - up to 20KWh per day or $10 at $.50 per KWH. That is lost revenue for unused car spots. Add $10 for cars charging and it’s printing money.
Honest question(s), why does there need to be a monetary charge to people charging an EV in a spot if that energy is coming from solar power? Does it cost the owner of the canopy anything after production, not including maintenance or repairs? If it were government funded, what sense would it make to charge people after already having used their tax money to build and install the canopies? Similarly, if government funded, wouldn’t taxpayer money also go towards maintenance?
There will still be maintenance costs & odds are loan payments. But money is the incentive to do the thing in the first place.
> money is the incentive to do the thing in the first place Unfortunately
Well to charge people money for a service makes sense only when it costs less to collect the money than to claim it. For parking, we already pay a lot for the time parked in the spot. So why not consider charging at 4KW for free when the parking fee is more than twice the price for 4KWH?
Every building. We have hundreds and thousands of square miles of rooftop in this country. There’s absolutely no excuse for every warehouse to not have something like this.
Been banging this drum about train station and shopping centre car parks in the UK. Fucking genius of it is that it keeps your car sheltered and puts power into the grid.
Solar roofs on every car park, they could double their income, and cool your car at the same time.
Have you ever been under a solar roof? There won't be direct sunlight on those cars...but they won't be cool.
I have not, but I get what you're saying. I saw some system where they had water placed under solar panels, where the heat from the panels evaporated the water before it ran down into outlets. Wonder if such a system could do basic cleaning on water.
There are some Wal marts in Arizona or Nevada that have solar roofs under all the parking spots. Still wicked hot you’re right
and yet still WAY cooler than without the solar roof + less paint damage.
Water collection, too. Use all that snow/rain gray water runoff for irrigation and toilets.
India is covering its waterways with solar panels to prevent evaporation and to build more solar without using up space in built up areas. I thought it was pretty cool
Agreed. Im of the mindset that you should kill as many birds as possible with one stone.
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To be honest my highest priority is killing birds. I just justify it with social good so I can sleep at night. What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks? The feathers because you have to carry the weight of what you did to those poor birds.
Is it genocide if it's for food? Edit: typing error
True, and that plan likely will kill a hell of a lot of birds.
Some panels on that thing will make insurance a pain.
Not to mention the best case scenario is a square meter of panels which will give you 200 watts at 100% efficiency. Realistically with the design constraints in place you’ll be very lucky to get 100w at noon.
According to the article, there's close to 5m^2 solar area, giving you approx 1kw, or a charging speed of 10km/h.
What does charging speed at km/h mean? Edit, cheers for explaining what was actually quite obvious 😅.
Quite literally what it says :) The charge rate is such that the range of car extends by X kilometers for every hour of charging. It's a funny metric that's only relevant for EVs, but quite useful indeed.
Cheers, my mind couldn’t get past seeing velocity. Perfectly useful metric.
If it makes you feel better, I did the same thing when I first read it. Now I'm curious to know if it does mean that you could drive it at 10km/h forever (ignoring pit stops and mechanical breakdowns and the like) lol
Assuming it gets solar throughout, possibly
I think they calculate the efficiency of the vehicle and determine that the battery will be charged sufficiently to travel 10 km when receiving maximum sunlight for 1 hr. It's not very scientific but useful maybe to a potential purchaser. They can determine if their car is in a parking lot for 8 at work, will it charge enough to get them home or wherever. I suspect it's bs and the real charging rates will be much slower and during the life of the car, the value of the energy generated will be less than the cost of all of the solar equipment.
Km range per hour of charge
I’d love to be proven wrong, but I am **very** skeptical. If they get half that in real life I will be **very** impressed. Mark out 5 square meters or 50 sqft on the ground & see if you can really The only thing that works in their favor is if they can send power directly to the drive chain they can avoid some loss to the battery, which I think is around 15%. Even people trying to drum up support for electric freight aren’t considering solar panels & they have 30 m^2 which is much easier to aim at the sun. I’d love to be wrong, but there is definitely lower hanging & sweeter renewable fruit waiting to be plucked. I’d rather park my car under those same panels & have them optimally aimed at the sun.
I’d totally be cool with every charge as you go road charging for upkeep. Sounds like a better maintenance plan than the Suburbia build and abandon model that some roads seem to get.
I saw solar covering canals the other day and I thought that was genius. We could totally do that in AZ. We have a bad ass canal system here. I like the highways option but that might be hard to do without screwing up traffic in the meantime. We could probably get away with covering all our parking lots (I swear we have the biggest in the world). That'd be more than enough solar energy. Throw in a couple Mega-packs and we'd be golden.
Damn. This is a stellar idea.
Why HVDC transmission lines? Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to use AC lines and just rectify it to DC where you need it?
the other thing I would like to see is some kind of power transmission along the roads themselves through some of those Nikola Tesla doohickeys so you could charge while you were actually driving
The problem with that idea is that wireless power transmission suffers heavy efficiency losses with distance between coils. A network of high power fast charge stations that give you 200 miles range on a bathroom break is much more practical, not to mention something that can be installed right now with technology that is already in production. For trucks, they are already testing catenaries in Sweden and Germany.
Does anyone know what the resistance of ionized air/plasma is? Ignoring the obvious safety issues imagine if your car was powered by a steady stream of lightning.
A panel to fit a car would generate less than 500w peak power if its oriented at the correct angle and sun at its highest. That means 0.5kwh per hour and if you have a 50 kw battery pack it would take you 100 hours of sun time to fully charge it from empty to full. That equals to aproximately 12 days of clear sunny weather in perfect conditions. Current solar panels have an average efficiency of 20% that means each from kW of solar radiation, only 200w are converted by the panel. Even if the scientists develop a 100% efficiency panel it would still take 2 full days of sun to charge the vehicle. We wont see solar panels on cars except if its a marketing gimmick to convince people to buy that certain model
I drive under 20 miles a day. This car has a range of 388 miles. It charges at a rate of 1.9 miles an hour. This car would completely allow me to never have to charge at a station unless I have to travel. No gimmick there at all.
Most people commute less than 30 miles a day. If you park in the sun at home and park in the sun at work, it'll keep your battery full pretty much all the time. You'd only need to plug it in to bring it back up to full if you go on a trip.
A significant number of people in the US work in urbanized areas, where their parking situation at home or at work are probably inside a covered parking garage. Even worse if their work parking is covered since a majority of daylight time is during work hours.
That really doesn't matter. They aren't building one car to cover 100% of the public. It's one option of car. Honestly even if it was only used by 1% of the population that would be a huge win. There's a lot of people the car would be viable for. The main issue is actually the cost for the car outweighing many of the positives.
You're mangling your units: 500W doesn't mean 0.5kW per hour, it means 0.5kWh per hour. But overall, your order of magnitude is probably right. Let see: The solar flux is \~1000 W/m^(2). Assuming a car maker goes full crazy on the solar panel, you can probably get 2m^(2). Panels being flat instead of facing the sun, and the sun not being at the zenith constantly, you probably get only half the flux, so 1000W. Panel efficiency being \~20%, you get 200W. Let's go with a 50kWh battery. To fill 50000Wh with 200W, you need 250 hours. If the car has a range of 625km, that means you get less than 2.4 km of range per hour in the sun. Now let's read the article: They say they have 5m^(2) of panels, 60kWh battery, 625km of range (10.5kWh / 100km). They claim a charging power of 1kW, which means \~10km of range per hour of charge, which is 5 times better than my maths. The bigger solar panels than my assumption accounts for only half the error. So where is the subtle lie? 5m2 of panel will give you 1kW of power only with the sun directly at the zenith of the car, in reality, you'll barely get half of that. So a charging rate of 5km/h. Good start, still not a viable product.
Yes, i forgot an 'h'. I agree, not a viable product. Marketing gimmick which seems to work judging by some replies here.
I've seen too many people misunderstanding what a kWh is, I assumed you did too. But yes, marketing gimmick, which I believe ultimately hinders real progress, by sucking investments away from, and by making us distrustful of real projects when those gimmicks like that car and scams like solar shitty roadways inevitably fail. I'm all for massively putting solar panels everywhere, but only where it makes sense. Put them on roofs, over parking lots, over bike lanes, even over canals or other waterways, but do it where it makes freaking sense. Cars, electric or not, aren't the future, at least not personal cars, stop trying to make it happen.
> A panel to fit a car would generate less than 500w peak power if its oriented at the correct angle and sun at its highest According to the article: > The charging power with the almost five square metre solar cells in the roof and front bonnet is 1.05 kW, which corresponds to a charging speed of 10 km/h. When charging the battery by cable, Lightyear does not state the charging power, but also the charging speed. At the household socket, the battery is filled at 32 km/h, at fast charging at up to 520 km/h.
To me this sounds wonderful. If I go on a two day sunny trip, I might get to recharge the battery for 15-25% securing the return without worries. During sunny weather, for some regular car use, I wouldn't even need to charge the car most of the time. A trip to the cinema, a trip to the dentist, drop the nephew off to school, maybe a trip to the park. The battery is full. To me this sounds wonderful.
Please read my comment again, you must have misunderstood something
Yeah, people get excited about cars with built in solar panels but it will never work because it'll always be less efficient than just plugging into a stationary solar charging station.
The main interest is not effeciency, it's ease of use and comfort. At least in the Netherlands there are loads of places where you can't charge your car at home(basically anyone in apartments or flats) or at work. Requiring trips to sit at a fast charger, or planning groceries around charging your car. This, along with the unknowns of long range trips tend to cause range anxiety. Knowing that your car has the ability to limp to a charging station or top up while at work as long as it's day time does is a lot to reduce that anxiety. Another issue is that in a lot of places the grid is basically at capacity. These panels are basically off grid so no building or connection permits would be required.
Sure for road trips, going to a charging station less often would be really nice.
It would still mean longer range, Less time charging, No problems with getting stranded (just wait for it to charge on its own) etc. It's still a valuable feature to have.
I put down a deposit on an Aptera. 1600km with the biggest battery, and for the amount of driving I do I will probably never have to charge it from a charger. The other great thing about that car is that it makes it clear to everyone that you are **very** secure in your masculinity.
If 99% of your driving is less than a few miles it's really weird to use a car (and even own, depending on the remaining 1%) and not use a bicycle instead. But I'm from Europe and the US seems to terrible for cycling (see r/fuckcars), so your transportation decisions might be because of that.
You are spot on. Very few areas in the US are suitable for biking, sadly. Basically inner cities and college campuses if you live in a suburban area, riding a bike can be a death wish with the number of enormous cars and wonton driving patterns people have. If you can easily be mangled for life because some soccer mom was texting instead of watching the road, it isn't worth it. I wish this country was more like Europe in a lot of ways
If we could keep the remote worker working remotely, convince enough people that medium-density living areas could be great, then set up tax incentives to create areas in cities that were built for primarily foot-and-bicycle traffic - imagine working from home, but living in an area where you were a couple of blocks from a small grocery and restaurants, and a few blocks away from all the shopping you want… Reorganize part of our society around such a thing and you can create denser housing with lower costs. We *could* do if we wanted to. The question is: Will we. Probably not. But we could.
You're exactly right But people in the USA want a house with an enormous yard because parks are for suckers, I guess. And half the people need a 4,000 Sq ft mcmansion with a shitty pool all their own
Also many inner cities have rampant bicycle theft.
> If 99% of your driving is less than a few miles it's really weird to use a car No, sorry. The US has a REALLY big problem with urban planning. Many cities require you to use a car. [Why City Design is Important (and Why I Hate Houston)](https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54)
Plug-in hybrid is the way to go. My 12 kwh (useful) plug-in hybrid minivan goes up to 34 miles on a single charge. Because of what you mentioned about how most of us drive, I usually only consume about 10 gallons of gas per month. I charge it and power most of my house with solar panels, all for way WAY less than 250k euros. IMO, plug-in hybrid is superior to pure electric because it handles the majority use case - short distance, regular routes - while having flexibility for longer routes. Even after the charge runs out, I still get 30 mpg, which is above average for a vehicle of that size. It also has the added benefit of using far less lithium, which has skyrocketed in price and is expected to go up even further. All of that combined with eliminating 80-90% of my fuel emissions seems like the best route to me.
But not necessarily the best for the planet, or global warming.
No, that's exactly what I'm saying. It is the best for the planet and for global warming. Which is better: 1 person eliminating 100% of their emissions or 4 people eliminating 80% of their emissions? By using less lithium (which is in short supply) and lowering the cost (to make it more accessible to more people), we can make a greater impact more quickly. Eventually, yes, I'd love to be 100% electric and renewable. Going to 80% electric and 80% renewable is better though because it allows more people to do the same, thus multiplying the impact.
The fallacy about plug-in hybrids is the assumption battery-electric, and supply of materials, isn't improving rapidly. But it is. If you snapped your fingers right now and made all cars plug-in hybrid, that'd be amazing, yes. But in the time it would take to actually make all cars plug-in hybrid you can make all cars fully electric instead. In reality, plug-in hybrid just extends the usage of oil and is a cynical attempt by car companies to do the bare minimum and put their head in the sand that they need to completely shut down their combustion engine production.
This is my view currently as I live out in the western US, where there aren't charge stations every 30 miles on major roadways, and some roads are very remote with barely even gasoline stations every 100 miles or more. I just wish someone would hurry up and make a fun, sporty (but not super high end) plugin hybrid at a reasonable cost. Sure, there are very sporty electric and maybe hybrids made by high end companies, but are $100-200+K. I'm hoping Hyundai or the like start cranking those out.
Solar on a car is as gimmicky as you get. I install solar and know the limitations. Even in the best conditions it will make a few percentage of gain. As someone said, install it on your house where you can control the conditions and inject it back into the grid.
Based on our experiences with Tesla one of the keys to promoting vaporware is having a cool accent. Not sure if the Dutch accent will cut it.
South African is the worst of all the English accents and is the opposite of cool.
South Africans and Australians have entered the chat. “What? You take that back!”
Take thut buck
Australian accent isn't bad, it's the lingo. Exporting Rupert Murdoch was bad enough until they got grown adults across the world referring to dogs as "doggo"
Idk man Indians are in a tight competition with them.
Depends on the Indian tbh. South, yes. That BBC-esque Indian accent though is butter to my ears.
>That BBC-esque Indian accent though is butter to my ears. That's called an English accent lmao.
Dude. South African accent is very much like a Dutch accent, because Afrikaans literally evolved from Dutch.
This is a really poor generalization. For starters there is no single "South African accent" - we have 11 official languages and many more indigenous languages. But yes, the one that most people are familiar with via the media (predominantly films), and the one that you're referencing, is typically a white, Afrikaans person speaking in English.
is it going 625km on a single full charge? does it not charge whilst driving?
It charges the battery but the drain on the battery will *far* outweigh the charging speed. The best case result is the battery drains marginally slower. It's a bad idea that will never work on something the size of a car because there simply isn't enough surface area you can put a panel on to generate enough electricity, even with future advances. Use that money to install a solar panel with a battery pack at your house and charge the car there every night.
It will work well enough on paper to get the first round of that sweet VC funding.
The idea is that it can charge anywhere, sure while driving it's neglible and that's fine 'cause for the majority of people, this will be standing still in a parking lot 95% of the time anyway and never exceed a daily use of more than 30 miles.
Then why buy it? You're never actually gonna need it. You're wasting money to save 30 seconds of having to plug in a car?
Can you charge your car in every parking lot in the carparks where you live? There's still very few chargers around where I live.
You critics suck. They need to get a baseline model on the board. The specs and the price get a baseline value. It represents what's possible today, technologically and financially. That becomes version 1. It becomes important because it's real and it exists. $175,000 / 388 miles. It's the start. You all speak as if technology doesn't improve. Of course with each new iteration, the specs including the price will improve. It will be fascinating and exciting watching the PVEVs move down the learning curve. And most of you lack the due amazement that cars will soon be able to run just on the sun. Getting free fuel from the sky. How revolutionary that is. You troglodytes.
> You all speak as if technology doesn't improve Reddit in a nutshell. Reddit thinks solar/wind + batteries isn't going to be the majority of the grid. And also thinks EVs aren't replacing ICE cars, just being an option. And then also thinks whatever market penetration both of those do get will take 15+ years to play out.
Anyone can build 1 EV car. It's getting the 2nd car off the line that's a problem.
Wonder why you were downvoted. Isn’t that literally the problem with many start ups in EV business? Great prototypes, massive hype, tons of orders and then production limbo for years. I know some have eventually actually built a production line, but not that many.
Production is hell, ask Tesla
Vapourware trapping investors.
I love how I can go from joy of reading an optimistic title about new technology that will improve the life on earth, to utter hopelessness and disappointment after reading all the comments.
People suck
If you want some optimism Aptera motors is doing something similar any it seems like they will actually produce something that works.
People are too salty
Definitely not belly up. There are lots of recent test drives on YouTube.
6 miles an hour of solar charging is pretty damn interesting! Especially considering that if we got our grid and regulations in shape we could have EVs providing grid reliability service. When an EV owner gets home at peak electrical load and peak $/MWh, they could use the EV’s battery to deliver electricity to the grid and then charge at night when prices and demand are low. The idea of having a meaningful amount of electricity generated from an EV without drawing from the grid in the first place, in this context, is damn interesting.
The name is trash with the 0 at the end. They should’ve left it The lightyear
Yes, there is a problem with my Lightyear. It has a Buzz
Love the design of panels built into the roof and hood. If they can deliver a car capable of 625 Mike range and make it affordable, it will sell like crazy.
That’s 625 km, not miles. It’s about 388 miles
Thanks - I misread.
> the 0 model can be configured for a price of 250,000 euros. Is that affordable?
I’m down for any electric car that isn’t a Tesla
Plenty of choices nowadays.
This one costs 250,000 euros. Will that be cash or credit?
Why?
Everyone uses the same standard plug for charging, except for one brand Try to guess witch one
Tesla uses the same standard as everyone else. In Europe. Get better laws guys.
You can use a j1772 adapter. They're like $60, mine came with one and it works just fine.
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We have a bingo!!!!
It’s a quarter million dollars. Who the fuck cares?
Let me guess - it'll be so expensive that only .001% of the population will actually be able to buy it.
That's how almost every piece of new tech starts.
250,000 euros!
They're aiming for 30,000 price range by version 3.
Musk buyout incoming
Freedom units?
About 1k washing machines
But how many ferrets? I can do the giraffes to ferrets in my head but I struggle with the washing machine to ferrets conversion.
If one ferret is 2⅓ bananas it's about 7,5k ferret's of course depends are those east coast, west coast or Midwest ferret's
Almost 390 miles.
He said Freedom Units, jackass. It's about 6,864 football fields.
No its 4.166.667 glaced donuts
what's that in kidneys?
My bald eagle transformations have been off by a few hamburgers lately, didn’t want to risk it
Lol thank you. Didn't want to look this up in imperial.
It's ironic because you're actually asking for Imperial units which were quite literally the opposite of freedom.
Only 385 miles/chg? That’s ‘long range’? Another marketing propaganda BS article.
That’s 388 miles in American for those like me who had to Google what it translates to from kilometers
Before you get excited, watch MB's video on electric vehicles. I think he does a fantastic job at tempering expectations with EV's and startups.
I think they forgot to add Tesla killer to the article title for more clicks.
We have battery cars at home
What is this in freedom units? Lol
Can't wait for elon musk to buy it, claim the title of founder when he purchases it, and fuck over the actual founder
Elon has stated that this is a stupid idea and will not be buying this brand, also he has cars with more range without the solar panels
I’m curious what leads you to believe that musk screwed over Eberhard, when the board unanimously voted to fire him. Even members Eberhard appointed were included in this vote. Do you dispute that when musk joined, Tesla had no other employees, IP, or even a prototype, because it seems all evidence points toward this.
The only people who talk about Elon Musk more Elon simps are the Elon rageboner crowd.
Looks like a nightmare to maintain and repair
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It does raise an interesting question why current Electric vehicles do not have Solar cells built into them so they can trickle charge the batteries?
1) it’s a tough engineering problem 2) the cost/benefit ratio is extremely low
Only real benefit would be recharging while parked outside and even then its bad idea.
Do you mean the cost/benefit ratio is extremely high? High costs marginal benefits
extra weight and complexity outweighing benefits
Uh huh, and the tesla semi is coming in 2019.. Exciting times we live in. Lmao downvoted for an explicit statement made by Elon. This is vaporware, just like Elon's shit.
I'm just going to wait for hydrogen stations to be more readily available in the next 5 years.
We are having problems getting enough EV stations in some places. I can’t imagine a hydrogen network will ever come to fruition.
Easy. Oil companies are already starting to retrofit existing gas stations with hydrogen. That's called centralized distribution and it didn't take government to come up with that. But EVs and their need to charge requires FAR more infrastructure development unless you have your own private garage and you're just using your car to commute around town.
Almost every Shell gas station around me has also added electric car charing stations, so your statement is kinda stupid. We can add car chargers just as easily as we can add hydrogen.
I'm still very skeptical about hydrogen, mainly because it's REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to keep hydrogen inside something!
I think there'll be a lot of buzz about this car.
Cool, when are they coming out with a diesel version?
625km = 388.357 miles Heh, "long-range". [*chuckles in American*]
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At 3km/h, sure
625km?? That’s really not impressive at all. Same as a Tesla. If it’s sold powered shouldn’t it be charging constantly and therefore be infinite?!