this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
412 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
59200 readers
3846 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A car has up to 55 sq. ft. available to panel. A good solar panel gets maybe 20 W/sq. ft. efficiency. An electric car has around an 80 kWh battery. A day has roughly the equivalent of 5 hours of full sunlight.
Then you just multiply/divide everything together, and you get 14½ days.
If it takes 14 days to charge the battery, you just need to use it less then a 14th of its range per day and this all becomes very feasible, no? First link on google tells me high efficiency EVs output 6.4km per kwh. That's 30 km a day at 80kwh, nothing to scoff at in my opinion, although its probably less.
I also think it could become popular to lengthen the in between charging times with higher capacity batteries.
+1 for the use of wolfram
Then factor in the extra cost of the panels and connecting hardware. The ones mentioned in OP are supposed to be dirt cheap, but they're also half as efficient. The tradeoff cancels out the benefit.
Also, this won't help highway driving much. EVs have already solved city driving just fine. 100mi range will do, even without good charging stations outside your home (with caveats for apartment dwellers). Highway range is where we need improvement, but you can't ask people to just drive for 1/14th of the day there.
Fair enough. That definitely is true for a car. I would wonder whether the power/surface area/weight/energy consumption all scale linearly or if a vehicle like a semi with more surface area could take advantage of increased number solar panels, or would the amount of work needed to move the larger truck scale equally to the power gained?
Thank you for your proving reasoning for your opinions and sources. You're groovy. Don't feel like you have to again for this random thought of mine unless it's enjoyable for you as part of our conversation.
Wait, what the fuck, dude. I had given you the math for semi trucks two hours before you posted this. You already had those numbers, and yet you speculate otherwise here.
That guy isn't being a dick. You've got a bad attitude and I don't like talking to you. Goodbye.
So... You denied reality because you didn't like the person explaining it to you? Grats, you're politician material now
No, I wasn't enjoying one conversation in the room so I went to talk to somebody else. I'm not required to talk to them and I am free to explore a topic with someone else without citing previous discussions I've had. I deny nothing that guy said, though I also don't take it as face value when they also ignored my points in the thread, I'd just rather talk to this person about it if they'd care to.
I'm often a dick to people arguing dishonestly. Guilty.
Oh just fuck off. You're seriously chasing me around the comment section, butthurt because I'd rather talk to somebody less unpleasant. You're not changing my perspective if that's why you're doing it.