Kinda wrong.
You can’t get enough solar energy to directly drive a car any practical distance, but you aren’t actually driving your car most of the time. When you look at weekly energy requirements, most drivers would be able to accumulate enough energy for all of their driving with just a few decent panels. You would need a battery to take advantage of this, or only drive at night.
Also, check out the solar cannonball run. A guy made a mobile rig of like 40 flexible panels and drove a Model three across the US using only solar charging.
reddig33@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Electric vehicles can charge from a standard outlet. I would imagine if you gather enough of those panels that actually plug into a standard outlet, you could charge a car (though slowly). Your average EV can put on about 10 miles to its “tank” every hour of charging at 120 volts.
The alternative would be if the protagonist found a home with solar panels and backup batteries. These exist today, and are becoming more common.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 4 days ago
In a real apocalypse scenario, those BEVs would get scavenged to create electric bikes, grain mills, and water pumps. The original cars are not useful in a world without deliberately car-dependent economic systems, and it’s just not a proper apocalypse if you’ve still got an automotive lobby.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz 4 days ago
Mad Max
jokedeity@reddthat.com 17 hours ago
Delete it now
JokeDeity@lemmynsfw.com 1 day ago
Delete it now
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Say what you will about the bloodstained vision of senseless carnage and hopeless grief portrayed therein, but at least most wastelanders worked near home.
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 4 days ago
It would be easy to find enough solar panels to charge an electric vehicle in most sunny areas, though it would probably be easier to just look for a large enough existing install and skip all the DIY. (Just look for the shiniest roof.)
But I think the real problem is in the EV itself. Batteries self-discharge and chemically degrade over time, so unless the apocalypse was recent, a lot of EVs you find might have damaged batteries, especially if fully discharged to begin with.
You could cannibalize one or more EVs to cobble together enough good cells to get past the safety cutoffs, but it would take a while and you would need to be careful since internal voltage in EVs tends to be high (like 400-800 volts).
TLDR: if this is a movie depiction, definitely use a montage.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 4 days ago
You would need a lot of panels and days of time to charge to any significant amount of distance. If you set up a solar farm in one location you could use the car for short, regular trips.
You wouldn’t be able to take the panels with you on trips without stopping for several days at a time before traveling another dozen miles or so. Electric vehicles really do pull a massive amount of energy compared to solar cells that the vehicle could haul around.
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 4 days ago
200 watt/panel. 10 panels. 10 hours of charging. 0.2 kW x 10 x 10h = 20 kWh.
Bad mileage because of conductions, so 20 kWh / 100 km.
That means every 10 panels gets you about 100 km / 60 miles per day.
That’s just very rough based on a lot of debatable assumptions of course.
Saleh@feddit.org 4 days ago
I think you overestimate the necessity to move long distances in an apocalyptic setting once things have settled. 10miles is actually quite a long distance to move yourself and all your stuff in a day. And since you aren’t expected in the office at 9am, it does not really matter if it takes you 1 hour or 10 days to move somewhere.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Once you settle down it isn’t important, but unless you happen to be lucky enough that an urban setting is a good location for a post apocalyptic residence then moving a sizeable distance is a likely need. Any rural area will require moving a few hundred miles at least, and if you can’t take the vehicle with you then it doesn’t serve much of a purpose.
Depends on why things are post apocalyptic of course.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 days ago
10 miles is about 1 hour’s bike ride or 2-3 hours of walking. There’s a reason rural America has a town every 20 miles or so, that’s about half a day’s travel by foot, or one can feasibly go to the next town, do something that takes a while and return back by horse or bike within a day