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August 2008 Posts »
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http://www.sunmotor.us/Company_Products.html
OK, reality check on Sun Motors
1) 400 mile range 2) Solar panel changes the car in 2 days.
RANGE: I really doubt it will have a 400 mile range. Solectria Sunrise did get 375 miles on a single change in a race under controlled conditions and a champion racer at the wheel. However, I rather doubt any practical car can reach that. The Tesla has a 53 KWH battery to go 220 miles (EPA test conditions).
SOLAR. The specs say this has a 300 Watt solar panel. That seems reasonable. Let's estimate the output. My 3000 W solar panels on my house produce 16 KWH in one day (a good day). That means we can expect 1.6KWH per day from the 300 W panel. Let's assume they have a 53KWH battery like the Telsa. It will take 33 days (one month) to charge the batteries.
I don't know why these companies make these exaggerated claims. There is so much BS in the EV marketplace.
By the way, commercial solar panels are currently running at $4.85/watt (customer price). For a 300 Watt panel, this represents about $1500 for the solar panel. I wonder if it is worth it.
I don't mind the looks of this car. 400 mile range maybe they could offer a 1/4 pack to lower costs.
All submarines before nuclear were battery-electric underwater. As you can't run an gas engine below water, no air.
As for the solar panel, it probably offers 5-10 miles range. Still it would be nice to have larger battery pack to bank electricity. She might have been thinking with original lead-acid battery pack. Car probably gets 100 whr/mile at 25 mph.
Seems lithum iron phosphate is becoming battery of choice.
Efficiency
We often talk about BEV's as being 90% efficient. However, converting Coal or natural gas or oil to electricity is probably on the order of 30% efficient. So to get the overall efficiency from well-to-wheel you have to multiply the two numbers together. 90% times 30% = 27% efficient. Now BEV's and ICE's look pretty similar in terms of efficiency.
On the other hand, you can make electricity from wind or solar (I do) and then you can talk about BEV's being 90% efficient because you don't have conversion efficiencies of the fossil fuel to worry about.
Who would want to go 400 miles at 25mph-35mph if I'm using a low speed car I'm probably not going out more than around 10 miles- say 25 miles round trip- My personal opinion is a low speed car 25-35mph wouldn't need more than 50 mile range a medium speed car 45-55mph wouldn't need more than 150 mile range.
I guess I assumed the EX model was a full speed vehicle and had a 400 mile range. But now that I go back and look, it is not clear. The description is very brief.
From the podcast, Karen said that the EX and DX were both NEV's- th EX just had an extended range- i.e. larger battery pack, though this was hard to understand from her interview- she jumped around a bit- seemed very nice, but perhaps is not used to being interviewed. Though I would imagine her engineer will make it a bit more clear on the PV panel at the least;-)
FOSH WARNING !!!!!
Avoid the FOSH website. It is full of anti-Obama vile messages and gross-bloody-graphic images. It is a complete HOAX.
