I was expecting some crazy ~6 trailer long train of towage, most just empty & solar only.
Oh this is just a regular truck with solar across most of the trailer. That's a lot more area than my first guess.
Oh this is just a regular truck with solar across most of the trailer. That's a lot more area than my first guess.
Of course your best case scenario is only about 400sqft illuminated. Insolation tops out at 100w/sqft and the max efficiency of commercial panels is maybe 22-24%. Doing the math there you get something like 7-10kw which is nowhere near enough to push one of these down the highway.
A normal semi gets maybe 6-8mpg on diesel which means burning 8gal to go 60mi in 1hr. You get about 10hp/gal/hr out of a diesel so that means it takes something like 80hp or 60kw to drive a truck down the road.
It's more then enough to run the climate control, lights, and other cab loads and slow battery drain just a bit. But you'd have to leave the truck to charge for a week in order to drive for a day.
If you can have components with negative load it's all good. Say that 7-10kw / 60kw is 12% to 17% savings. 6-8mpg becomes 6.72-9.36 mpg
Or for laughs one could say every 10th car requires no fuel.