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by defrost 84 days ago
You absolutely can .. but in order to be self sustaining vehicles need to look somewhat like the builds that appear in Australian multi day solar races - ultra lightweight, extreme streamlining, zero driver comfort, no extras like cargo space and automatic rear doors, etc.

Maybe in time efficiencies will get there.

* https://worldsolarchallenge.org/

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K0FD9Hh6XY

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_lVdrHnbYo

Addendum: addressing the [dead] comment below

> With 100% efficiency the area of the car is too small to produce enough electricity to drive.

is false - Australia has been racing solar powered cars for a good many years now, clearly they generate sufficient power to drive, just not especially fast, with any reserve energy, or at night, with any real comfort, etc.
2 comments
embedding-shape 84 days ago
Ok, so lets say we didn't want 100% of the energy to come from those "self-sustainable panels on the car", but rather N%, so we keep most everything as-is, except switching all the outside body/chassi panels for solar panels, how much N% could we recover from that? Could it change so someone goes from needing to charge once every 3 days to once every 2 weeks lets say? Together with re-generative breaking, maybe it could at least have some impact.
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thechao 84 days ago
You're off by an order of magnitude. It's a few hundred watts; an EV is consuming 10s of kilowatts. (Ignore the watt-watt/hour sloppiness, pls.) To charge my car 60% would take about 2 months. Ambient needs (battery cooling) would eat up more than I'd get back. At best it extends idle sit time.
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embedding-shape 83 days ago
> You're off by an order of magnitude.

How can a question be "off"? :D I literally used N% as to avoid replies like this, but seems you managed anyways...

> To charge my car 60% would take about 2 months.

Depends heavily on where you park and where in the world you live, wouldn't it? I use my car maybe 2-3 hours per week, most of the time it's just standing outside in sunny Spain, would that change the calculation anything?

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functional_dev 84 days ago
consumer car needs hundreds of pounds of reinforcement... just to pass side impact test
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