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Comment by iamerroragent | Hacker News Reader

> The panel can charge the ID Buzz while parked or driving and is capable of generating enough power to provide an additional estimated 1,864 miles of range over the course of a year. Averaged out, that's just over 150 miles of range a month, which isn't massive, but hey it's something, right?

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150 miles of range a month is like a week of free gas for the average commuter.

To put it differently, if I sit my ice car in the sun for a month, I get zero or possibly negative miles.

Average miles driven per year is 13,500 or around 260 miles per week. The better way to look at it is 1864 / 13500 which maximally gives you about 13% of those yearly miles "for free."

With WFH, I wonder how those averages have changed. Some folks are using cars much less often.

However, as someone who has prior experiences with keeping a low mileage car, I'd say parking it out in the sun is a terrible goal. You really want it garaged to slow purely time-based deterioration if you are not hitting high miles per year. A power hookup in the garage is the way to go, and then get house solar if desired.

So then, this car-mounted solar is only useful during an extended outing where you are away from your usual parking. Can it ever become cost effective for the value it provides in such short bursts?

Average is probably not too useful here because there are outliers who drive a lot. Median would be more interesting.

Those numbers seem widely optimistic and probably assume the panels are always optimally generating, when panel placement is a huge performance factor.

Those panels are maybe generating 0.1 kwh in the top quartile of exposure, and have a battery over 50 Kwh in capacity.

On an amazing day you may charge a single kwh. That's a 2% increase at best.

Every single naive person asks why they can't put a solar panel on a car and get rid of gasoline. They don't understand the surface to output relationship of solar power. This is mainly a marketing gimmick. Ideally those panels could be optimally placed and generate their full potential. Using them so inefficiently is a waste.

>Ideally those panels could be optimally placed and generate their full potential.

But then you're trading drag/weight for some system that angles them optimally.

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