At 11:52 AM 4/2/5, Nick Palmer wrote: >Taken from the online New York Times [snip] >But they soon wanted to travel on batteries for more than a mile and began >to collaborate through CalCars on adding batteries to the Prius that would >allow for longer pure electric travel. With the help of dozens of >volunteer engineers collaborating online, the group retrofitted a Prius in >Mr. Gremban's garage to travel about 10 miles on nothing but battery >power.
In sunny places like California adding some solar power may eventually add some useful flat-territory cruise range, or just help cover the charge cost for the 10 mile return home commute. If using a 90 percent efficient electric power sytem, a 60 mpg car would be able to cruise on about 8 kw. If a 2 m^2 solar array is deployed for 8 hours while parking at work, and if it is 30 percent efficient, it could (ideally) store about 4.8 kWh, enough to cruise for about 1/2 hour, or 30 miles. Even with lower efficiencies immediately available, on a sunny day at least half a daily 10 mile return commute would not require any gas at all. A problem with this idea is that a foldable solar array would be vulnerable to theft. If the array were built into the car roof and hood it might cause the car to be hot. Maybe an air gap under the array plus an insulated roof would help some. Regards, Horace Heffner
