4 ms·

Viability of 1hr per 4hrs charging aside... I think I had implicitly assumed that most people with commutes do not park outside (and thus would miss the valuab

Viability of 1hr per 4hrs charging aside... I think I had implicitly assumed that most people with commutes do not park outside (and thus would miss the valuable daylight charging hours, and would thus be better off charging a wallpack at home). But in hindsight, I think that's incorrect. _most_ people probably park outside at work, wouldn't they? those statistics would make or break a solar car.

Robotbeat 4y ago
By far most, I’d say. And actually I’d say that parking garages and residential garages are both natural places for plug in charging. It’s street parking or vast (unlit) outdoor parking lots that would be a challenge for plug in charging, exactly the places that would work fairly well for solar car charging. So I think it’s a valid niche. The issue is it’s still annoyingly expensive to place solar cells on car surfaces, and really we should use those high efficiency multijunction cells. Tandem perovskite cells are very promising there, getting both high efficiency (over 30% and rising) and low cost. But conforming shapes to car bodies is also a challenge. However if those can be solved, it’d be great to have this option.