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Comment by donw | Hacker News Reader

Didn't think of that angle, but perhaps!

Pretty much everything in transportation is being pushed in the direction of centralized control; hence, the focus on EVs and the push against biofuels.

The marketing is all "climate change", but the reality is that biofuel-based vehicles can, in theory, be manufactured locally with machine tools, and the fuel can be grown locally as well. I'd bet money that they're better for the environment, too. And no, not interested in some "study" from Harvard funded by people that have a deeply-vested interest in EVs.

Modern battery tech is complicated. Manufacturing has to be much more centralized. And has plenty of places to insert remotely-operated control mechanisms linking to cellular networks.

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> biofuel-based vehicles can, in theory, be manufactured locally with machine tools

The excellent thing about electricity is that it's fungible. Electricity from a wind farm in the North Sea, a nuclear plant in the South of France or a Texan solar panel is identical as far as the electric vehicle is concerned. In contrast with bio-fuels if you can't make the right chemical soup for this specific model of engine well too bad, buy a new engine or undertake expensive conversion.

There are immediate practical advantages (many EV owners never spend any time putting "fuel" into their vehicle, unlike with ICE, since just charging it whenever it's sat around doing nothing is easy with electricity) but there are also large strategic advantages in terms of energy independence.

To get even the poor efficiency of modern internal combustion engines took a lot of careful engineering which would be undone by your "local machine tools" approach, so that makes the bargain even worse. In contrast it's easy to build high efficiency electric motors, and we've been doing that in many applications for years.

To the extent the answer isn't EVs that's because the answer is less car culture.

In contrast with bio-fuels if you can't make the right chemical soup for this specific model of engine well too bad, buy a new engine or undertake expensive conversion

Something like biodiesel is almost entirely a drop-in replacement, and diesel engines will burn a wide range of flammable liquids. Gasoline engines can be fairly easily converted to burn a bunch of other fuels too.

> diesel engines will burn a wide range of flammable liquids

Rudolf Diesel's engine will indeed burn lots of things to produce power. But the diesel engine in your 2022 car isn't just Mr Diesel's machine with nicer bodywork, it has been carefully fine-tuned for efficiency, ride, emissions and other considerations, including by using self-lubricating fuel injectors. If you use the wrong fuel on a good day you destroy those benefits and on a bad day you're also destroying the expensive engine itself.

> In contrast it's easy to build high efficiency electric motors, and we've been doing that in many applications for years.

Playing devil's advocate: in the case of EVs, the hard part is not the motor, it's the battery. If it were easy to build high efficiency and high capacity batteries which are also small and light enough to be used on a vehicle, we'd have EVs everywhere long ago. (A second hard part is the power semiconductors, to convert the DC from the battery to variable frequency AC which can be used by these high efficiency electric motors.)

Sure, but the biofuel is a lot more energy dense. People do buy large tanks of fuel so they can drive long distances where there are no gas stations. Think trips across Alaska, or Northern Yukon. Most of us live in range of a gas station and so just stopping for gas every few hundred miles is more reasonable than a large tank (which has issues), but you can do that. You cannot get nearly as much range out of a battery, no matter how large the trailer is.

It is true that if you need energy density then you want to carry fuel and not use batteries, although whether biofuel makes a good choice I'm dubious about.

'course if you're just driving a hundred miles to see Aunt Tilly, and then fifty more to see Grandma, and then a hundred more to see your old friend from high school, well, those people all got electricity, and as we saw the EV doesn't care that it's not that premium Supercharger electricity, it's all the same if you can wait. So stay the night.

Long distance wilderness trips are both (a) not something most people ever do, so we are not talking about a mass market product here and (b) not well suited to the typical private motor vehicle of today. Who is maintaining roads across the wilderness that so few people use there's no gas station ?

I didn't ask who built them 'cos that'll be the US Government or a State Government, both huge fans of building sexy new projects. But to drive on it a decade later it needs maintenance, which isn't sexy new infrastructure and I'm guessing if there's no gas stations there's no road repair budget. Which means now you need an off-roader, maybe a pretty serious one, or running out of fuel will be the very least of your problems.

Those 1% trips just outside a EV range are a problem. Liquid fuels are everywhere and fast. Charging infrastructure is still lacking, though if you plan at least most trips are possible. The time to charge is still ... though realistically you should take those breaks anyway most people don't

On the other hand, any electric car can be charged from solar panels on your roof.

Then there's Aptera, which can charge itself from the sun if you're in a reasonably sunny area, and which has a strong commitment to right-to-repair: https://aptera.us/right-to-repair-commitment-feat-rich-rebui...

They also make their own battery packs, despite not exactly being a large operation. https://aptera.us/battery-update/

Color me surprised to see that name again! I thought Aptera was dead and gone. I hope they fare better this time. The solar car route could be an interesting niche.

Yep. Car looks pretty much the same as the old version. Sandy Munro, the engineer famous for taking Teslas apart, has been advising them.

Solar panels on my car roof might be good to charge my laptop. Or, keep a car from losing charge while idle.

I think you'd have to leave the car in the sun for days, just to drive to the 5 minutes away store and back.

It just doesn't make any sense if you know anything about physics. Sun provides about 1kW of power per square meter.....at noon, at the equator, with no clouds.

Automotive solar panels like they use are about 20% efficient. Your average car roof is....let's be super forgiving and say 2sqm. So in the middle of the day, at the equator, you are generating about 400W of power.

The average EV battery is 50kWh. So you'd need 125 hours in full sun to recharge it fully. During a regular sunny day you'd get maybe.....2-3kWh back into your battery? So yeah, about enough to cover ~10 miles in a regular EV.

Sure it's better than nothing, but remember that this is in ideal conditions. In less than ideal conditions you are talking yeah, enough energy to cover a mile or two per day of charging. It's just silly.

You seem to forget that bar exceptions (people working on the road all day), most passenger cars are staying parked 99% of the time and use for small errands.

The aptera is also built to provide up to 1000miles in its highest spec out of one complete charge.

Right and how long does it take to charge that 1000 mile range in an average British city? A full year?

And I'm not forgetting it - I'm just saying that the overall gain doesn't seem to be worth it. The cost of solar panels integrated into the car would pay for a lot of electricity from the grid instead.

Right, if you need to fully charge then plug it in. You'll do that after a road trip. But if you live somewhere sunny and typically drive 20 miles a day, you can keep it topped up by just parking in the sun.

Some will find this worthwhile, others won't. Apartment dwellers without convenient chargers might find it handy. The comment I replied to advocated doing your own energy production, and if that's what you care about, grid power doesn't really compete.

The aptera is still plugable and you would still benefit from the efficiency even in sorry sad UK...And I have seen nowhere anyone saying it was for everyone. It only have 2 seats and limited luggage capacity for a start, it won't replace a family van.

I live in Andalusia where decent sunlight is all year and I would love a similar thing with 4 seats. With only 2 I don't really see the advantage over using my motorbike which is much easier to park.

Luggage capacity isn't bad if you don't need much vertical space. It has that big flat area in the back.

This illustrates how inefficient cars are for individual transportation. An eBike takes between 10 and 20 Wh per mile. Gas is so inexpensive and energy dense that we just got unware how ridiculous it is to drive by car even on short distances.

And the Aptera is a lot more efficient than a normal car. Glance at their home page and you'll see why. https://aptera.us/

eBikes are extremely slow. What's the point of them? Just ride a normal bike.

The first poster is clearly talking about local power generation when they say roof, so a building, not the freaking vehicle.

I'm literally replying to a comment that is talking about solar panels on a car, did you reply to the wrong person maybe?

No, I replied to you because you felt the need to hammer on the misunderstanding in the comment you replied to. The horse, it's dead, look, it doesn't twitch when I beat upon it!

Both of you had the opportunity to not assume the first post was stupid but passed on it.

You're name making any sense. None.

This model of car has an option to charge from the sun, with solar panels on it. The misunderstanding is yours, and it is you beating a dead horse.

I started by talking about solar collection on the roof of a building, which applies to any electric vehicle.

But Aptera actually has panels on the car. That would be useless on a Tesla, but the Aptera is far more aerodynamic and only has three wheels. They don't claim to fully recharge in a day, just to get enough extra range in a day to cover many people's typical driving needs.

Bear in mind too in winter the days are shorter, sunlight is weaker, and you're using *aaaaaaall* of the electrical goodies.

Even down south here at 56°N there's about five hours of sunlight in winter and as you get further north it just gets shorter. That's about enough charge to get the length of a supermarket car park.

Well that depends on the car. Solar race cars cross the country on sunlight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_car_racing

Aptera is less extreme than that, but still a lot more efficient than a normal car, mainly due to aerodynamics, plus light weight and three wheels. Take a glance at aptera.us and you'll see how far they took the aerodynamics.

They claim up to 40 miles of range collected per day, if you're someplace like southern California, and max out their panel options. The car is pretty flat and wide, which also helps.

If you don't have much sun available, you can plug into a regular wall outlet and add range reasonably quickly.

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