Except by 4 years, the battery efficiency will be degraded and the numbers will change.
No way you can stack enough solar cells on a car to power it. The physics don't work. If there was that much energy in that square footage it would cook us like a steak when we walked outside.
That being said, I can see electric cars being the norm with a constant rpm diesel turbine/generator as a backup to keep the batteries charged.
Electric cars are cool. I've got four golf carts at the ranchito now. There are weekends that I park my truck when I get there and never move it until I leave.
CNG seems to be the logical answer. Cleaner combustion, can be converted from existing engines, and is plentiful. Oh, and the infrastructure exists to have it distributed EVEN in one's home...
No offense, but I'm sure at one point they thought it would be impossible to make a huge variety of things that now exist in abundance today. Can you imagine explaining a microprocessor to a computer scientist in the 1950s? He would likely tell you the same thing.
Saying that something, "Just can't work" usually only looks at the current situation and discounts any potential scientific breakthroughs down the road that can completely revolutionize an industry.
"CNG seems to be the logical answer. Cleaner combustion, can be converted from existing engines, and is plentiful."
Nope, just cost-shifting. Extractors shift the external cost of poisoned ground and surface water, poisoned earth to water consumers. Nothing clean about fracking.
The physics don't work. Period. There are some things that are just universal truths. Moving X amount of pounds Y distance at Z speed requires a certain minimum amount of energy input. Sunlight won't cut it.
Obviously it doesn't need to power the car entirely. That being said, supplemental power from solar on a car would be a good thing.
Maybe not ONLY PV, but perhaps a system which captures electricity using PV, as well as the heat energy. Also the electricity produced in the braking system (like the hybrids). Combine that with lighter materials used in making a car and I think it would eventually be possible. Plus you could have a battery pack somewhere in there to compensate for cloudy days.
(BTW, I am no scientist, so I don't have a procedure for how you would be able to capture and use the heat energy. It just seems that as we get better and better at extracting energy, that we will start expanding the types of energy we can capture and use)
I've never said I hate government even though you like to view everyone who isn't a progressive raving lunatic as the same. It is however govt. policy that is preventing diesel from dominating the US market.
Hopefully, you won't have to drive across the desert in one.
How much power do you think you can get from PV the size of a typical car roof?
Yep. During the 90s the Clinton administration and the EPA (both noted VRWC advocates) were pretty much on an anti-diesel crusade.
why would it be worse than driving a gas car across the desert?
Try doing the power calculations sometime. The solar energy hitting the profile of a car is a very small percentage of the power required for transportation.
I just read that the British Vauxhall has a 300 mile range.
Not as good as gas, but it's getting there.
As far as I know, the Vauxhall Ampera is a Volt!
wiki: Volt:
Also called:
Holden Volt
Opel Ampera
Vauxhall Ampera
The future is finding the catalyst so you can burn hydrogen in the atmosphere without producing nitrates. Electric is not economical because storage sucks. Now that nanotube weaves can hold hydrogen in storage , that is no longer a hurdle.
Did you guys read anything back during the cold weather about the Volts up north? They were getting about 20 miles on a charge when it was below freezing.
LOL....
I completely forgot about battery efficiency and temperature...
LOL...
Volt Range Shrinks in Cold Weather
By Julie Wernau
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — It's a tough week to be the guy who led development of the Chevy Volt's battery. Consumer Reports said its tests showed the battery's range at a paltry 23 to 28 miles in cold weather, far below the 40 miles originally promised.
"The financial payback is not there," said Jake Fisher, a senior automotive engineer at Consumer Reports Auto Test Center.
A hybrid, he said in an interview, would make more sense. (The Volt — which runs as a fully electric plug-in vehicle and switches to gasoline power once that battery is depleted — cost Consumer Reports $48,000 at a dealership before a $7,500 federal tax credit. Toyota's Prius is about half that price.)
Then, Ford Motor Co. seized on the negative press for the Volt by issuing its own news release: "Weather Climates No Problem for Ford Focus Electric's Liquid-Heated Battery System."
But Bill Wallace, director of global battery systems for GM, didn't flinch.
"It turns out batteries are like people: They love room temperature," Wallace said Thursday at an energy forum at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
"Nobody — Ford, Nissan or anybody — has anything better," he said. "
Consumer Reports concludes the Volt is an expensive way to go green.
Read more: ABQJOURNAL BIZ: Volt Range Shrinks in Cold Weather http://www.abqjournal.com/biz/052256...#ixzz1HSXbUqiD
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Would ultra-capacitors be immune to the effect of temperature? I only ask because I saw an article that said that the president of tesla stated that ultra-capacitors, not more efficient batteries are the future of electric cars.
Huh, that's interesting.
Have you read anything on how far a Volt can go in a desert by any chance?
I have no idea. Why don't you go buy one for $48,000 and find out?
The vast majority of hybrids use NiMH (the Prius definitely does), IIRC, so longevity of the battery is not that much of a concern. Most of them also come with 6/8 years warranty included on the battery (I think the Volt is 8, Prius 6).
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