Solar power car

> Has anyone seen an electric car with solar panels on it's roof?

Yes!

There are countless examples:

A recent Chinese effort here:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/17/chinese-made-solar-powered-car-gets-1...

> I thought that would have been an obvious thing to do but I haven't seen one.

Indeed, as I got tired of waiting for someone else to bring out one, I've started to design and build one:

http://www.goodentrepreneur.com/The-Competition/Entries-Pool/Solar-Velom...

Details on my own forum here: http://forums.bravenewdawn.com/viewforum.php?f=63

My aim is for something low cost (eg. less than £1,000 retail), and low running costs, hence a tricycle, then no need for road tax, insurance, MOT/etc. also parts will be cheaper and easier to replace than an ordinary car.

It looks like we are just seeing the return of such vehicles with the likes of Sinclair again attempting to break into the electric vehicle market:

http://www.gizmag.com/sinclair-x1-pedal-electric/16838/picture/123971/

Priced at some £600 for a single seat machine, its quite reasonable I reckon.

I'm going for the two seater market myself, with the aim for greater shopping carrying capacity and with solar panels added so one doesn't have to recharge it every night.

Plus I reckon 3 wheels is going to be much easier to ride than 2 for many folk.

Long term plans are for the vehicles to be used for taxi and freight transport to hopefully become a low cost transport backbone to other efforts, such as community building. (With a desire to do such things as lend out a percentage of the fleet free to the unemployed to help them get jobs for example.)

I'm keen to see a locally produced, low/zero material import requirement vehicle that is cheaper to use than the bus for most folk and can be easily retrofitted/upgraded as desired. (Eg. sell basic model with just a few solar panels, but allow the design such that people can slap on more panels as they can afford so for greater range.)

There great but I think it would need to be something that looked like thishttp://www.renault-ze.com/z.e.-range/fluence-z.e./presentation-1935.html (but with solar panels nicely designed into the roof) for me to own one. I coudn't drive a three wheeler or anything that wasn't as comfortable as a modern car.

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-drives/Renault-...

> How much will Renault's Fluence ZE cost?
>
> It's not fixed yet, but we're looking at around £22-25k for the car plus an as yet unspecified
> battery lease. Perhaps £50 per month.

Sadly for the majority that kind of price is out of reach.

I like to think of my efforts as similar to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T

> The Model T set 1908 as the historic year that the automobile became popular. It is generally
> regarded as the first affordable automobile, the car that opened travel to the common
> middle-class American

Only aimed at low-income Britains.

> I coudn't drive a three wheeler or anything that wasn't as comfortable as a modern car.

Often what we want, and what we can afford are two different things

I'd be happy just to get out of the rain and wind compared with walking, though it will be a shame not have a heater onboard, it would be a step up for folk without a car! (One just has to put more clothes on..)

But I can see how for people with a gas guzzler car, how it would be a step down..

Sadly, because as the weight of the vehicle goes up, so does the need for expensive batteries and electric motor. (Mine will weigh in at 60kg, rather than the something like the G-Wiz which comes in at ten times that at 665kg, but then costs ten times the price..

In a more affluent society though, it would become more possible to have something like what you want as standard.

All we have to do is to build such a society

Well I think you're doing a good thing but you don't need me to tell you that.

I drive a 1.2, it's really cheap to run on fuel and the insurance and tax are the cheapest bracket. But at the same time it's comfortable and a modern design.

My worry is that the big companies will replace petrol and diesel profits with even bigger profits from electric. I don't know how exactly but one way could be: "Don't mind the expensive car, the power is cheap" but then once they have enough people sucked in put the price up on the power.

Well, I do see sadly a future with higher electricity prices, one of the main reasons I want it to be possible to drive my vehicle without the need to plug it into expensive mains electric to use it!

The main reason why electricity prices are going up is the need to build more power stations, as we are running a bit short of them having not bothered to invest in replacements.. (Though there is some profit taking we could all do without, shame we privatised them eh..)

I see low cost (Or even free for domestic users..) electricity for customers as one of the big 'transition' things we could do, I've certainly pencilled in at some point trying to build/get built solar/geothermal power stations to make this happen.

Its the main reason I hear for example the closure of our only aluminium smelternig plant in Wales because the local nuclear station is closing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/8201254.stm

(The ore incidently is shipped all the way from Australia..)

I suppose the solution is we should build a smeltering plant down there, to avoid the need to transport the stuff here..

Another thing I'd like to see is higher recycling rates for products so we need less new raw materials and can make do with using the old stuff repeatedly. (Which is why I'm more fond of rental as a business model than selling, so that old products can be more easily recycled than relying on customers not to dump their old models in the trash..)

Rental also lends itself more to at some point being done for free. (As all the infarstructure is in place to deal with lending/returning.)

Incidently, I was reading just today in the news how pollutting ships are, I had no idea!

http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/

A reason to go for nuclear powered ships (Perhaps the up and coming fusion tech could be used for that in particular...), and also perhaps more importantly, local production, rather than imports..

Or solar powered ships.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/11/worlds-l...

Local to me I sometimes see an electric canal boat, its whisper quiet and it makes me think that solar powered canal boats would be a nice alternative to artic trucks on the motorway.. (And I hear 1/4 the cost of fuel..)

Reasons why I'd like to see solar cell/panel factories built so we can churn them out as cheap as chips. (I hear retail price from manufactors is 3 times the cost price.)

I think at the moment, Sharp are the only company in the UK to look towards increasing output of solar cells to meet demand here.

Another thing on my todo list later on..

FX [ looks at large list.. ]

http://www.catalyst-commercial.co.uk/blog/latest-news/energy-price-incre...

> According to Ofgem, the energy industry regulator, energy prices are set to rise £6 every year
> until 2020, as £32bn is needed to “re-wire” Britain. In total Ofgem estimates that Britain needs
> £200 billion in investments over the next decade if it is to meet the government’s green energy
> targets and above all “keep the lights on”.

I seem to recal estimates indicate a 50% increase over the next ten years at least, and perhaps 100% even. (I'm currently paying around 15 pence a unit for electricity I notice.)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=electric-cars-cost-per-...

Looking at figures here, it would seem to indicate for the UK that we'd pay the equilivant to £1.50p to £3 a gallon for electric. (I'm looking at getting something like 2,000 miles from a gallon equilivant because my vehicle is so lightweight.)

But you also need to factor in battery replacement costs, which tend to be very high. (And the reason I'm keen to use A) very few batteries, B) cheap lead acid, and C) Maybe ordinary domestic D cells for ease of replacement. (More expensive the D cells, say Nicads than lead acid, but you get more range for less/same weight.)

Whlist many poo poo lead acid batteries for being too old tech, their recycling aspect is excellent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93acid_battery

> Lead–acid battery recycling is one of the most successful recycling programs in the world.
> In the United States 97% of all battery lead was recycled between 1997 and 2001.