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Comment by wffurr | Hacker News Reader

The solar panels seem like a gimmick. Way less power than a rooftop installation. It might make some sense for an occasional car user like me. Most of the time my Bolt sits in the driveway, charged, waiting to be used.

But for a commuter or daily user, it seems silly. You'll be unplugged away from the house most of the day and grid-charging overnight. Maybe you get a bit of extra power in the battery from the panels, but I'd rather have a cheaper vehicle that didn't have them.

There's some other weird stuff in their Wikipedia entry, like a moss (!) based air filtration system.

It also seems bold to have a public offering when they've never even shipped a vehicle to a customer.

Is this a real thing? What's the story here?

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The solar panel roof bullshit again? I should make this a keyboard macro, as often as some vaporware EV car company says they're going to put a solar panel on the roof (rather than something useful, like a moonroof).

Assume an equivalent to a 200W panel on top (though I'd consider it fortunate if someone could pull off even 100W). Five hours in direct sunlight in optimal conditions will give you a kilowatt hour (kWh). That will carry our '11 Nissan Leaf four (yes, the number 4) whole miles...after five hours in the sun. If you live near the equator, and within a couple miles of your workplace, then a Sonos vehicle might be for you! If you live in the Pacific Northwest and don't live next door to work, can I interest you in a lightly used 2011 Nissan Leaf?

Sonos seems to have even gone all-in on the solar thing. "Solar instead of paint", "powered by the sun", which just says to me, "don't look really hard at the details of our offering. Look! Solar panels!"

The sun only puts out something like 1500w per square meter onto the surface of the Earth in perfect conditions. Unless we figure out how to generate more solar power than hits the panels, they'll never work on an average car, even in perfect conditions.

From their website, the moss is not living and should be replaced at the same time as the air filtration system.

https://sonomotors.com/en/faq/innovations/

They cited apartments as a target market; no garage means no charging.

Unfortunately they’re talking about 112 km per week, which just doesn’t seem like a solution.

Maybe it's regional, but where I live most apartment-dwellers have covered parking (so presumably much less than 112km/week of sun)

> It also seems bold to have a public offering when they've never even shipped a vehicle to a customer.

Rivian did the same thing and everyone seems to be creaming themselves over it.

I think there's a bunch of real-life Rivians out there driving around, aren't there?

Anyway, "someone else did it", doesn't seem like a ringing endorsement...

I guess the Rivian at least has some theoretical appeal?

Like, here the plan is to build a shitbox that isn't competitive on the market even 2 years ago.

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