Electric cars are now obsolete .

alfmurph

Planning is now underway for solar power cars .

Grumpy_chap

And what type of energy does the solar power produce?

neilmcl

You haven't really thought this one through have you OP?

Stubod

alfmurph said:

Planning is now underway for solar power cars .

..does that mean you won't be able to drive at night?

sheramber

or in winter up north where any sun is so low in the sky solar power lights don't work for a couple of months.

Stubod

sheramber said:

or in winter up north where any sun is so low in the sky solar power lights don't work for a couple of months.

..but to compensate you get a lot of wind...could you not attach sails.....it worked for Nelson?

DrEskimo

So that would be....an electric car then?

ElefantEd

Typically a square metre of panel will generate 200W (at best) - multiply this by 10 hours (let's be generous) means you generate about 7200kJ of energy, or 2kWhours. This is enough to drive your car about 8-10 miles. Even if the surface area of panels on the car was 2m2, you're only looking at 20 miles range. So an electric car with solar panels could only really use them to top up the battery a bit, it wouldn't be viable to have it as the only source of energy. In reality you would almost certainly get less than this as the panels wouldn't be at the optimum angle and could easily be in shade some or all of the time.

RichardD1970

Been around for ages.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/07/solar-challenge-australia-cars

But not very practical for day to day use.

AdrianC

RichardD1970 said:

Been around for ages.

And then some.

Electric cars go back to the 19th century - they held the land speed record until 1902 - while PV was invented in the mid 19th century, first commercialised in the 50s.

Bigphil1474

Whilst I don't agree with the OP, you all seem to be falling into the same old trap. Yes, current solar panel tech would make it impossible to have a working usable solar powered car, but that might change. Imagine if they could turn the whole car into a solar power absorption system that could recharge batteries that were also built into the body of the car and could store a weeks worth or more of required energy. Maybe they could be used to feed back into the electricity network - you plug your car in at work, during the day it recharges the car and any excess goes back into the network earning you a few pence, offsetting any night time charges. Combining solar recharging with plug in recharging might be the difference for people who need long range electric cars. Could be the future. On the other hand, if we diverged the economy into large scale hamster breeding, we could all have hamster powered cars. Might cost a bit on the food side.