On Feb 12, 2015, at 12:48 PM, Lawrence Rhodes via EV <[email protected]> wrote:
> It is clear that it is possible to build a practical solar vehicle. Not only that, it's downright common. I'd venture to suggest that the majority of EVs on the road today are probably solar powered. At the very least, a significant minority. It's just that the panels stay on the house's rooftop, where they can produce at their optimum output constantly, and can be made much cheaper (and bigger and heavier and more powerful) and can power more than just the car. Putting the panels on the car is a neat gimmick, and I'm sure there are obscure use cases where it makes sense. But those exact same panels will _always_ produce more power in a fixed orientation at a fixed good site -- and that's before you get anywhere near the engineering challenges (and expenses). So, if "practical" is the goal, forget about putting the panels on the car. Quite simply, it will never ever be even remotely practical, by any common definition of the term. But if "nifty" is your goal and you're willing to spend insane amounts of time and money (and especially if that's your idea of fun), then go for it. Just don't pretend to fool yourself into thinking it's even remotely related to practicability. Cheers, 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/20150212/568ea01d/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)
