4 ms·

Question is whether the panels on the car's roof or on the building's roof can be installed cheaper, and how the installation+maintainance / energy output ratio

• cptskippy 6y ago
  Don't discount the fact that a car may not have direct sunlight where it's parked, particularly a city car with high buildings surrounding it. I could park a solar panel in my driveway and it wouldn't receive direct sunlight until about 1pm. At 1pm my south facing rooftop solar array is at 97% of peak output, and by 2pm it's down to 82% and falls off pretty sharply after that. At some point in the afternoon the shadow cast from across the street would block that direct sunlight. According to their specs, the car goes 255km on a 35kWh pack which is ~7.286km/Wh. It says it can produce up to 245km of range which is roughly 33.6kWh a week or 4.8kWh a day at best. In my case, it would be closer to half that value at best (2.4kWh), we've been having overcast days and my array has been outputting half it's normal capacity (1.2kWh). That's over 60km of range which would probably work for me but is 1 day's commute for a lot of people.
  • rtkwe 6y ago
    Also I bet the efficiency numbers are for the panel receiving optimal direct sunlight not the high angle light it's going to get because it's on the side of a car nearly vertical.