Author Topic: Car with solar panel range extender? Really??  (Read 8977 times)

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Offline Codebird

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Re: Car with solar panel range extender? Really??
« Reply #25 on: August 02, 2017, 07:43:58 am »
I can see one potential use for a tiny panel on a car: Self-discharge compensation. Just a little one on the roof to ensure that when you come back from your month-long holiday the battery is still at full charge. You can already get trickle-charge panels for plain ICE cars intended for just this purpose.
 

Offline cavacTopic starter

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Re: Car with solar panel range extender? Really??
« Reply #26 on: August 03, 2017, 11:08:44 am »
The door panels will never see direct sun unless the car is on an Arctic or Tierra Del Fuego plain mid-summer and slowly driven in a circle to follow the sun....

Idea for the next Kickstarter project will be big (solar powered) rotating plates for the parking area, to help cars track the sun.  |O
"I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus doing something incredibly stupid... then i went ahead anyway." (Crowe, MST3K)
 

Online Fungus

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Re: Car with solar panel range extender? Really??
« Reply #27 on: August 03, 2017, 12:13:54 pm »
This fails for practical reasons more than technical ones.

a) The extra weight of the car will reduce the normal range from the batteries
b) The cost of replacing panels every time a stone hits you or some idiot runs a shopping cart into your car will completely cancel any savings in electricity.

Still, this is a Kickstarter aimed at people who want moss on their dashboard, so...  :-//

 

Offline eugenenine

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Re: Car with solar panel range extender? Really??
« Reply #28 on: August 03, 2017, 01:15:10 pm »
I can see one potential use for a tiny panel on a car: Self-discharge compensation. Just a little one on the roof to ensure that when you come back from your month-long holiday the battery is still at full charge. You can already get trickle-charge panels for plain ICE cars intended for just this purpose.

Some car dealers have little ones they sit on the dash while the car are on the lot.
 

Offline max_torque

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Re: Car with solar panel range extender? Really??
« Reply #29 on: June 16, 2018, 09:36:01 am »
Now claiming to have 5000 'orders' or is that 'expressions of interest'?

Price is E16,000 without the battery, which for a fully homolgated, low volume passenger car seems extremely difficult to meet, even with a VERY basic spec.

If we look at comparable EV's from a non premium OEM, then the cheapest is the Renault Twizy, which is not a car but a quadracycle, and is as basic as you can make something and sell it, costs around E8,000 without it's battery, and that's made by a massive passenger car OEM that can leverage economies of scale from it's other volume products. The most basic ICE powered Renault clio is around E15,000, and they make tens of thousands of those, and again, leverage parts sharing and economies of scale.
The most basic full sized EV is the Renault Zoe, which is had a 22kWH battery (now has a 40kWh one) and used to cost around E15,000.

So given, the full backing of an existing OEM (parts sharing, dealer network sharing, spare/repair parts & systems, etc etc) then it looks like you can sell a small EV for around E15,000 and (possibly) make money on it but the business case is looking marginal at best for a new start up with a similar pricing band.

And there is the small fact of if you want to take a risk on a new start up verses saving something like E0.4 a day (they claim 2 to 4kWH of "free" energy per day costing between 20 and 40 cents)




 

Online Fungus

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Re: Car with solar panel range extender? Really??
« Reply #30 on: June 16, 2018, 09:57:42 am »
If we look at comparable EV's from a non premium OEM, then the cheapest is the Renault Twizy, which is not a car but a quadracycle, and is as basic as you can make something and sell it, costs around E8,000 without it's battery, and that's made by a massive passenger car OEM that can leverage economies of scale from it's other volume products.

I don't think the Twizy is being sold as cheaply as possible.

I can't see any members of the public buying one. The only ones I've seen are owned by hipster companies as a gimmick. The local police have a couple of them as well for driving around the city center and doing their shows (which is the same thing, really).

Renault will have huge overheads in the design phase. They need endless meetings, full size models to show the boss, consumer surveys, etc. before the engineers are even told anything about it. Then they need to revise everything based on engineer feedback. A couple of guys in a shed can make huge savings there.



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« Last Edit: June 16, 2018, 10:32:51 am by Fungus »
 


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