On Sep 27, 2014, at 2:21 AM, EVDL Administrator via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote:
> I would add that for an EV hobbyist, building a car like this would be one > heck of an undertaking. Maybe Lawrence can do it. I would love to see him > succeed. I know I couldn't. "Ditto." The solar challenge is always and forever going to be a great way to push the boundaries of vehicular efficiency, because it places such an unavoidable and _very_ low limit on power consumption. You're never going to get more than a kilowatt per square meter of vehicular footprint under ideal sunny conditions, and that's just barely enough to power a perfectly-efficient vehicle with human passengers at freeway speeds. So, you don't need any sports governing body defining limits on engine size or vehicle weight or the like; just requiring the vehicle to be solar powered serves as a proxy for all those sorts of things. But cover the car's parking space with optimally-oriented solar panels and, by definition, that parking space generates significantly more electricity than the car itself ever will; simple geometry guarantees this. So, again, many -- at least a significant percentage, and possibly even a majority -- of electric vehicles are _already_ solar powered, which is as it should be. But, with rounding, 0.000% of solar-powered electric vehicles are or ever will carry their panels with them, and that's the way it's always going to be. It's also the way it _should_ be: a self-solar-powered car's electricity is only ever going to move the car, but a solar-powered car that gets its electricity from house rooftop panels is going to move the car _and_ power all those household appliances _and,_ very possibly, some of the neighbor's household appliances as well. And all for much less money per watt-hour, so what's not to love? Approach building a self-solar-powered car the same way you would any race vehicle: as an engineering challenge (and, presumably, one helluva fun project). But don't fool yourself into thinking it's even remotely practical or economical or has any widespread applications. b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20140927/7938caaf/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
