That’s the other part, they’ve made the car as efficient as possible. They’re estimating 40 miles/perfect day because of that.
Comment on Helmond-based solar car maker Lightyear suspends car production, switches to building solar roofs
Cort@lemmy.world 1 year agoSo, fewer than 10 miles per day in perfect conditions?
DoomBot5@lemmy.world 1 year ago
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 year ago
700 watts = .7 kW
If you figure 10 hours of that (or longer but with less-perfect conditions) you can get 7kWh. I estimate about 3.5 miles per kWH on my Bolt. Not sure this car’s efficiency, but it gives us a ballpark number. That would give about 25 miles of driving. I understand that there are plenty of other factors that can go into this, but “fewer than 10 miles in perfect conditions” isn’t necessarily accurate either.
Cort@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I would respectfully argue that 5 hours of peak output equivalent is more realistic as that’s what you’d get from static panels at the proper angle. But I didn’t figure in the claimed efficiency of the car.
My car, Ford cmax energi, was tested with a 500 watt panel and that only yielded 5 miles a day in great conditions. More like 2-3 miles most days, and that’s at roughly 300wh/mi., similar to your bolt. Never made it to production with solar.
spongebue@lemmy.world 1 year ago
But even that number you say is realistic, about half of what I just said, would still give a little more than the “less than 10 miles under perfect conditions” - I still don’t think it’s really that practical or worth the cost for a number of reasons, but I also like crunching numbers to know what it would look like before making that judgment.
Curious, how did you get power from a solar panel into a high-voltage battery?
Cort@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Wasn’t me personally. Solar was tested by the university of Georgia iirc. And I’d assume some sort of DC boost converter to boost the 30v to 300v when connecting the panel to the battery pack