topping up 5 miles a day means that a full battery will last me and the 1.8 million UK cars that do under 2000 miles a year, months between having to plug in and recharge.
- For me, 5 miles a day would keep the battery topped off and I wouldn't have to visit a charger except on longer trips.
- Would also be much more palatable to limit the full-charge voltage to something a little lower, prolonging the battery's useful life, knowing it'll passively recharge daily.
- Would also enable more connected vehicle features.
- Given a choice between a car that slowly loses a bit of charge daily, or one that gains charge, everyone would pick one that gains.
- Would also lessen the fear of running out of charge a mile away from a charger and needing a tow truck, just wait a few hours if it's sunny, or at least charge enough to park somewhere safe and phone a friend to pick you up and leave it for a day.
- Could go on camping trips a bit further away and let it charge for a week, or use the AC/heater occasionally.
- If the car is covered in snow it can warm up the panels and melt some snow. Teslas can already do this but it's even more practical with PV on the roof.
As long as people understand this doesn't mean they can drive nonstop in the sun or that they'll get any significant short-term range boost, it's still extremely sensible.
I suspect most people would choose the one which is $2000 less and looks nicer.
> Could go on camping trips a bit further away and let it charge for a week, or use the AC/heater occasionally.
Totally agree here, but I’m not buying a car based on what I do a half dozen weekends a year either. More important is to ensure you have bigger battery capacity. Buying the Model Y Long range, I paid $8k 80 miles more range. That’s going to be far more useful than the 5 miles per day you might get out of this.
This is all around something I might pay for as an upgrade, but certainly not an important part of the purchase decision.
Definitely.
> That's a 10 minute bike ride tops.
Perhaps, though it may not be possible cover that 2 mile commute by bike and survive.
At one point I was staying in a hotel along a small highway in Texas and saw a strip mall with restaurants on the other side. After about twenty minutes trying to find a way across I gave up and got in my car to cross the road.
Transit policy in many US cities and towns is somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile to anyone who is not driving a car.
Yes, those are all useful things but you have to (as a manufacturer, at least) weigh them against all the costs of building this feature, making production more complex, deal with the returns/breakages, etc. etc. So like the parent comment said, the consensus seems to be "just not worth it".
even a small ammount of self charging would go a very long way to make the car more pleasent to use.
In general, it’s a good idea to park your car under cover for a lot of reasons. Fabrics don’t do well when exposed to the high heat you get parking in the sun for prolonged periods. If you live or work in a city, chances are high that you are parking in a covered garage or basement.
Solar roofs on cars are a neat idea, but not likely near as useful for most people as spending the money on more batteries for longer range.
The best way to spend money improving an EV is almost always going to be on batteries or weight reduction. Self charging is neat, but unless you get much more efficient solar arrays, it’s always going to be limited to niche applications. Five miles more range is always going to be useful, solar arrays which add a mile or two of range under specific conditions are far less interesting.
But I did have one of those niche applications a while ago: I used to travel for work and often left my car parked random airport lots for months at a time which meant I occasionally came back to melted cassette tapes and a dead battery. In that case $100 of solar panels to run an exhaust fan and/or trickle charge the battery seems like it would have provided more utility to me than $100 of additional battery capacity.
I wouldn't be willing to add thousands of dollars worth of solar panels like the Sion and even if I did I wouldn't consider it a replacement for charging via the electric grid. But if my next car comes with an optional/after-market "solar package" that can integrate solar panels into the roof that seems like it would provide some value to me, at least more than the fancy wheel or audio packages they currently offer.
I probably come across as being more anti-solar roof than I am. Mostly just feel like this isn’t a feature I’d make a purchase decision on and wouldn’t likely pay too much for.
I was reading on the Tesla forums about just bringing a portable solar array for camping and it’s weirdly a lot more complicated than you’d think. Perhaps having it integrated would make it simpler, but it’s a lot trickier than just topping off a 12v battery with a solar array.
And if your only goal is to use it as an excuse to talk to your friends about having solar panels in your car then a small panel makes even more sense -- you can talk almost as much about a small panel as a large one for a fraction of the cost.
My main point though, is that the amount of electricity you can collect from the surface area of a car is very negligible. It's a very ambitious goal indeed. It's not worthless, it's basically free energy so anything gained is good I guess. It just seems there are a lot of people here that seem to think this is going to be better than it actually is. It's easy to get hyped up by the marketing, but my suspicion is it is much worse that we would wish.
I'm very skeptical of the numbers they have posted. Especially in England where hours of sunlight per year is below average. A quick search suggests England on average get roughly 1500 hours of sunshine per year. Comparatively, my state of South Carolina get upwards of 2800 hours. You should be looking at the 'cloudy' bars on the chart (https://sonomotors.com/en/solar-integration/). Assuming the charts are right, that's 77 Km per week at peak summer, and as low as 21 KM per week in the winter, realistically. If the weather of favorable, and you don't park in shade, then sure you could get better results.
We have basically reached the limit of what we can extract from solar cells, and there is not enough surface area on a small car to make 'the dream' come true, of having the car charge itself without plugging in.
It looks great on the marketing campaigns though. And I'll give this company credit, their body panel system does look very innovative. It seems they have made some important enhancements in this type of solar tech. And all things considered, the more electric cars on the road the better, I hope they sell a ton of them!
And in fact, for my short commute and I'm sure at least a few others, it would mean never having to visit a charger except for long trips.
Still - I have an EV that's sitting idle most of the time because of the pandemic. I had to plug it in a handful of times this year, that would mean plugging it in zero times.
Also, if it is very sunny, it means the car is hot. One common thing to do is to start climate control before getting into the car so it will be at a comfortable temperature. We would get this heat rejection for free?
Is it worth it? Not sure. Maybe. Everything else being the same (including price) I would pick a car equipped like this versus another car without this feature.
By the way, some Nissan Leaf trims had a small solar panel to charge the 12v battery. That was useful. Mine has to periodically connect the traction battery to do the same.
"In England in 2018 – the last date for which figures are available – 9 per cent of household vehicles were parked in a garage overnight; 63 per cent were parked on private property (but not garaged); 25 per cent were parked on the street; and 2 per cent were parked in other places."
My main POV that I rambled around I guess, is I’m trying to temper expectations. Browsing through this thread, I’m just seeing too many folks who are expecting way too much out of this technology. I’m almost certain it will not deliver on the high hopes most people have for it. Even if that hope is you don’t have to charge on your very short commute.
It’s easy to get hyped up reading the marketing material on this company’s website. The idea seems great to the lay person. But the fact of the matter is when I hear Elon Musk say publicly that he and his team looked into it, & they determined it’s not an idea worth pursuing, I believe him.
Engineers & physicists way smarter than you and me have done the calculations. There is only so much energy you can get out tiny solar panels on a car body. Period. We’re talking about the laws of physics here. Conceptually it sounds amazing, in reality the result is lackluster.
Everyone wants to look at it with ‘best case scenario’ mentality, but day to day it’s just not going to be that effective. Again, not saying it’s nothing. There are some benefits.
But the added complexity of manufacturing? Could it be scaled larger than the 13K preorders they have? What happens when the panels start failing and need to be repaired? What happens when you get in a fender bender and half your ’solar grid’ goes offline, will you be willing or able to pay a specialist to repair the intricate solar grid in your car body?
It’s just a lot of effort and resources that could be focused elsewhere. Everyone is so excited because the concept sounds amazing, but the downsides & complexity are real. I seriously doubt this will power your car even for small commutes.
Cost is the reason. You have to consider cost.
You seem to be claiming it's better to travel 50 miles a day by car than 10 miles a day, which is clearly wrong.
I don’t understand at all how you interpret what I said to mean this.
Order these in desirability:
1) Not travelling 2) Travelling by car for 2 miles 3) Travelling by car for 20 miles 4) Travelling by car for 200 miles
I've already done it. In no world is it better to own a car and travel 200 miles than it is to own the same car and travel 20 miles. In all worlds it's better to not travel at all.
You are saying that "you shouldn't drive 3 miles". Unless you are also saying "you shouldn't drive 30 miles" and "you shouldn't drive 300 miles" you're being a hipocritte.
The reason I'm such a fan of taxes on externalities is to stop micromanagers saying "you shouldn't do that specific journey in that specific way", and instead give financial incentivies to do the right thing.
If the lifecycle of a car that lasts say 150,000 miles costs $5k in externalities up front and $15k in externalities, then charge those externalities -- $5k on the purchase price, then 10c per mile.
Even in a situation where the first 2 miles costs more per mile (because in an ICE the engine needs to warm up), then charge 20c for the first 2 miles and 10c after that. Someone doing 2 miles will pay 40c, someone doing 20 miles will pay $2.20.
The rest of this gibberish. I have no idea how you see this as a reasonable interpretation to either of my posts.
My point was that if it’s feasible to walk or ride a bike someone instead of drive, you should. I didn’t make it well, but I also didn’t suggest you are better driving 10 times further either.
You’ve gone from making a reasonable point to being damned near incoherent.