this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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There's something that people really fail to grasp with solar, and that's the fact there is bugger all energy in the sun, and you need a huge surface area to get any meaningful energy.
A home solar array often takes up a significant chunk of the roof area, and the amount of surface area a car typically has means that even perfectly efficient solar panels wouldn't collect enough energy to significantly contribute to the vehicle's range.
There's a good reason why vehicle manufacturers don't bother adding them.
Yes, but with a light and efficient vehicle, along with enough area covered in solar, it should be able to get you about 15 miles of free travel when left out on a sunny day. It has a battery. It isn't just running on sunshine and lollipops.
Or 43 miles in Aptera's case
I'll believe that when I see it.
I'm not believing they'll get even close to that in a production vehicle that's US street legal.
The body weighs around 360kg, with a 60kwh battery it supposedly weighs around 800kg (the smallest and lightest option is 25kwh), with a drag coefficient of 0.13.
In comparison to some of the most efficient cars - the Hyundai Ioniq 6 is around 1,860kg with a drag coefficient of 0.21. Tesla Model 3 is around 1760kg with a drag coefficient of 0.219.
It's going to be a whole lot more efficient than the average car just based on these numbers.
Now it depends on how much of the car's surface will be covered by the solar panel and what's the panel's efficiency.
The Honda civics in the 1980's weighed around 800 or so kg as well. You know one of the reasons they got heavier? Crash ratings and safety features.
So once again I'm calling bs that they will get 45 miles out of this. Even if they got it classified as a motorcycle and scape around the car safety requirements, it still won't get a real world 45 miles a day from solar charging. Your math will never add up to that.
The Honda Civics of the 1980s did not have a drag coefficient below 0.2
Come back in a year or so and we'll see who has to eat their words.
That's a weird comparison to make. The Aptera is smaller and uses different materials.
Afaik it's going to be classified as a motorcycle in many states in the USA, but they're still aiming for a high rating. I know they have crumple zones and a safety cell made from composites akin to F1 cars.
Whether what they're planning will be enough, we'll only know for sure once they test it.
The math works quite well as long as the information is accurate.
Of course things can always turn up to be different in the end product.
But from the information we have now, ~4 hours of good sunlight conditions will be enough for 43 miles.
They are skirting the “street legal” and safety stuff by making an electric motorcycle instead of a car. Months (years?) ago I read something about how they are planning to tackle helmet laws in court because of this. Accident safety features are heavy, this thing is going to be a death trap on US roads in order to be as light as possible.
Overall I think that’s the right move, but I wouldn’t get in rush hour traffic in this thing.
That'll help keep it as light as they're planning. They still won't get 45 miles a day on solar unless they're doing 15mph on a flat road in Nevada during the summer. No way would it be an expected rating.
You should actually watch their videos and do some research before spewing your speculations. Seems like it's going to be pretty safe to me.
I’ve watched plenty of their videos. Despite how you took my message, I’m actually very excited and hope they make it to full production. But if you think that thing is going to be safe enough when some a-hole in a Tahoe t-bones you, you’re going to be very disappointed. The problem isn’t the Aptera, it’s the ridiculous sized SUVs already on the road.
Yeah, this is why it's dumb. When is a parked car parked ideally to capture sunlight? Just put the money into solar panels on a building or in a field, charge your car when parked, and you have a much better and cheaper product. The solar panels on the building can also be used to power other things, unlike the car. It's such a stupid idea and will be very expensive to get custom panels for the car that aren't super fragile and also efficient. Just spend that money and larger cheap panels. This is purely to get VC funding and nothing more. It's a waste of time and energy.
In america? Litterally everywhere. Even driving down the highway would get trickle charging.
If your expecting to fully charge from the panels, youre gonna have a bad day. But every extra mile would overcome the cost over its lifetime.
Again, I said ideally. When will it ever outperform solar on a rooftop of the same size? How much more size could you get for the price?
It would never overcome its opportunity cost, even if it recovers it's cost (which you're speculating on and have no idea of the cost). You could spend the extra money for a solar car, or spend the money for rooftop solar. Rooftop solar will always outperform it for the price, so you have a negative opportunity cost.
Look at you owning a rooftop to put solar on.
A lot of americans are renters and that number is unfortunately growing.
The apartment I was last in was several stories tall and, as such, the parking lot was shaded most of the day. Most of the parking spaces were even in a parking garage, so they get no sunlight. If you're in an apartment, odds are this won't work for you either.
There are companies working on non-permanent balcony solar though, which isn't as good as rooftop but still something. That'll still only work for probably about half of apartments (facing east or west), but it's inexpensive.
We do need solutions for apartment dwellers, but a solar car probably isn't it. We need to require a certain amount of availability of electric charging at apartments, and we also need better public transportation options and bike Infrastructure. This is a gimmick solution, not a real solution.
I mean, it'd be cool to get a couple miles of range here and there without having to plug in. Could make for a nice little errand vehicle in a smaller city where there aren't trees or tall buildings to block light and you just park in a driveway or apartment parking lot. If say the battery itself would be big enough for an 80 mile range, I could see some people never having to plug this car in.
It'll come down to price, of course. If it's cheap, it could be cool and useful. If it's expensive, it's a novelty and would have no practical reasoning to be purchased.
The base model has a 250mi range, and the biggest boi battery is estimated to get close to an 800mi range. The batteries are almost half the size of other EV batteries because of how efficient this vehicle is.
That'll be super interesting if it ends up staying that way.
It will not be cheap. It's going to be the price of an EV + the price of custom shaped solar + the price of R&D + the price of being a niche product and not having the efficiency of scale. It'll be a novelty without any doubt.
Everything takes r and d. Also, it's not "custom solar panels" anymore if you're ordering 10,000 of them. The article stated that supposedly they have a ton of pre orders of sorts. Custom means a one off, or even a few dozen of something. Not thousands.
Everything requires R&D, but doing more things requires more R&D. It's not just an EV, which requires it's own R&D.
Custom means it has one purpose, not that it's a one-off. No one else will be using the same panels they will be, so they don't benefit from the scale of mass-produced panels (and 10,000 is not a large number even if that's the number they have pre-ordered).
15 miles a day under ideal conditions isn't really a significant amount, most EVs could run for multiple weeks without being charged under those conditions.
I currently have an ICE car, and with how much I use it, 15 miles a day getting added to the battery on average would probably cover most of my usage. And you can still plug it in for longer trips. You're not forced to rely on solar alone.
That's 100 free miles a week. Sure, most people will need to charge it anyway, but that's still 100 free miles a week.
But I don't think it's a good idea. It would be more efficient to just put the same solar panels in your roof, where they don't contribute to the car's weight, don't force your to park in sunlight instead of indoor parking or garage, and whose output can be used for charging the car OR for anything else as needed.
It's not any more free than any other EV. it still uses energy. That energy can only be used for the car though. Put some solar on your house and it can charge your car (not free, the price of the panels same as the car). It will also be more efficient because it can be placed ideally, unlike the car. It'll also be cheaper for a larger area because it can take advantage of cheap standard panels instead of expensive custom ones.
Yeah, that's what I said.
That's ideal conditions, so very few people would actually see that. If you don't have somewhere to charge, you can typically charge up at somewhere like a supermarket.
Their tech isn't just the solar, they've optimized the car solely for efficiency. They claim their car can get 10 mi/kwh, so with 700W of solar panels they can get up to 40 miles of charge per day with just the solar. By contrast, the solar panels that are available on the new Prius get 4 miles of charge per day.
Now that their production-intent vehicles are just starting to be built up, I'm eagerly awaiting their actual test data that hopefully verifies their claims on efficiency, range, crash safety, etc. but we'll see 🤞 I really hope they succeed.
Yes, the aerodynamics + solar panels is what makes this vehicle enticing, not just the solar panels alone.
There is good amount of energy in the sunshine. The output of solar arrays struggle to make big power out of small surface areas because we haven't figured out how to get more than 20% of the power that hits the panel. If they do get 20% or more, it's been with very expensive and fragile panels.
Solar panels are also added weight, which reduces range. Any way you look at it, it makes more sense to have the solar panels at a base location you go back to.
I guess an RV, or a camp trailer, makes sense to have panels on it, but that's about it
There's also things like Sentinel mode on Teslas that use power.
My main gripe is people think a solar car will never need to be charged, or only on trips, and that's just not the case.
Aptera claims to be able to get 40 miles a day via solar. Most people drive less than that per day.
Solar panels are incredibly thin and light. There is no reason not to include them.
Price. Large standardized panels are cheaper. Until you cover static otherwise unused space with solar, there's no way this car is a better use of money.