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Ford Will Demo Solar-Charged Car At CES
Lucas123 writes "Ford plans to demonstrate its first solar-powered hybrid vehicle at CES next week. The Ford CMAX Solar Energi Concept car will have 1.5 square meters of solar photovoltaic cells on its roof to generate power to charge its battery. By themselves, the PV solar panels generate only 300W of power — not enough to charge the vehicle's battery in one day. Ford, however, said the car will be coupled with a carport that has solar concentrating lens atop it. The magnifying lens, called a Fresnel lens, will concentrate about 10 times the solar energy so the vehicle can be recharged in a single day — the same speed with which a standard hybrid charges using a plug." (Of course, some charge faster than others.)
Stack of pennies reduced to molten nickel by fresnal lens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcL7s9aX494
I wonder how many fires this sucker is going to start?
don't even think about sitting down on the leather upholstery wearing shorts!
Not for people in big citys or plcaes with big snow.
Also how much more is this on top of the same car with out solar? a lot more then what power will cost on it's own?
Instead of building a special garage and moving the car, wouldn't it be better to build some "fat" solar panels that have multiple PV cells and plastic lenses in them? The fat panels could use little motors to move the lenses over the cells. As an added bonus, you'd reduce the PV costs for solar systems in all applications, not just car charging. You'd also have a normal looking garage.
Ford's system sounds like the punchline to a Polish joke. I can go there, because I'm 50% Polish.
Just make sure that the lens doesn't focus the energy to a single point at ground level...
...he climb on da car roof, go BOOM!
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
If you drive less than 10 miles to get to work, as most of my relatives do, you could get a full charge by the end of the day, in Seattle or Santa Barbara, on a typical day.
If you drive to work in LA where it takes more than an hour to get to or from work, you'd want to plug in.
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It's good to have solar-powered things spread around, in case of major power grid problems. As LED street lights are installed, some of them should be solar powered. Especially in areas with a history of floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.
Really Ford? Do you even look at how and where your customers park or any other demographics of your customers? The vast majority of the population doesn't have a place to put a carport to park their solar powered car under. Nice try, but go back to the drawing board, this concept, is just that, a concept and one that should have never had more any more time put into it than 5 minutes at a design meeting The carport idea should have been struck dead 30 seconds into the conversation, taking away the Fresnel lens idea and moving forward with a truly viable solution.
Those who have to park on the street or in a garage can't use this, ever. Most HOA's for most housing developments won't allow this thing either as it's not on par with any architectural limitations of the community. Figure out how to put those lenses on the roof and look like it's part of the car and dump the stupid carport idea. Unless of course, your target customer for an electric car is someone who lives in the middle of nowhere, who most likely has to drive more than 20 miles just for fuel, groceries, possibly even mail, etc, then by all means, spend millions of dollars to target a very small faction of the population.
There is a parallel universe of concept cars somewhere, where you can drive a microturbine powered Jaguar, solar charged Ford, Mitsubishi EVO with in-wheel motors and ATTESA-like control, there are probably a bunch of nuclear powered Ford Nucleons whizzing about as well, and everyone swaps batteries in project Better Places station like there is no tomorrow. The logo of Shell is largely replaced by Duracell in cityscapes.
Meanwhile in the real world, we can all buy a Tesla Model S for a low starting price of cool $70K or thereabouts and hope they install a fast charger somewhere close by. And of course, wait in line.
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As far as I understand this, regardless what type of lens you have to magnify, if you're going to get about 10x the light, then the lens has to be about 10x the size of the area that would normally receive 1x the sunlight. Does this mean that there will be a huge lens atop the car? If so, will that be expensive? If so, will my car insurance go up?
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Why put them on the car? Put 10x the panels on the canopy and run a WIRE to the car to charge it. The panels could go to the grid if the car is not present. The weight savings will help the car, they will be cheaper panels for the wattage on the canopy and you can have a real amount of them. Panels on top of the car will often be wasted being covered by trees, parking garages and being at a less then optimum angle.
Wouldn't it be better to just build the solar cell into the carport so it can charge a battery all day while the car is driving around, then plug the car into the carport to be charged by the battery at night?
So 1.5 square meters of solar cells. How wonderful. Lets do a bit of physics to see exactly what we are getting, shall we? Solar insolation (not insulation, but insolation), is the amount of energy produced by the sun for a given area. Its constant, unless you want to double it by installing a second sun (have fun with that). On the earth, its about 1366 watts per square metre. Lets say that Ford's panels are better than what the best labs can experimentally produce: 50% efficient. So we have 683 watts per square meter. There are 1.5 square meters of panels on the car, so we get 1024 watts. Lets assume day is 12 hours and night is 12 hours, so we get 1024 watts for 12 hours or 12288 watt hours per day. Now, there are 746 watts for 1 horsepower. These solar panels can produce 1024/746 horsepower or 1.37 horsepower/hour. If the car uses a 50 horsepower engine, 50 horsepower /1.37 horsepower/hour =36.49 hours. If you let the car charge for 36.49 hours you can drive it for 1 hour. There are 12 daylight hours per day, so 36.49 / 12=3.04. If you let the car charge for 3.04 days, you can drive it for 1 hour, assuming you can store all the charge, clouds and rain don't affect anything, and you are happy driving a 50 horsepower car.
If they are not useful for charging on the go, it's dead weight that hurts efficiency. Also I am sure the car gets very hot from concentrated solar power.
Is something that would power a fan so that the car doesn't turn into an oven during the day.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
A good-sized fresnel lens like that would certainly help me work on my sun tan!
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Where;s the baby Harold? I thought I heard him screaming a minute ago.
He's strapped in his car seat. I think I left it on the car roof. Don't worry, he's fine.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4348255&cid=45160785
I agree the carport idea is ridiculous, but I generally like this idea. I drive my car only a few miles each day, and leave it parked in the sun all day while I am at work, so I could probably get most of my power from solar. We use my wife's car for long trips anyways.
This is just a variant of the plug-in hybrid they already sell. Still plugs in. Still has a gas engine for range. Only has the battery capacity for 21 electric-only miles, which is the weakest point I see.
I recall another manufacturer saying they would use solar panels to power the aircon at a low level so that the car wasn't an oven on your return to it. Far more useful to the average user than the warm fuzzies of getting 300W assisting in propelling the car.
Stop with the stupid.
The Car port, if covered with conventional solar panels will be a lot cheaper, easier to make, and will not require special manufacturing processes to create special lenses that follow the sun.
Less than 1/2 their price and I can make you a carport that will be double their power with conventional 200Watt panels. Plus require ZERO maintenance except for washing them once a year.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I have no problem with putting, what, 20 square feet (maximum) of solar cells on the car roof. It'll trickle a little power into the batteries, and it's kinda cool, even if the weight and cost of the cells makes it impractical. But, a 200 square foot optical carport lens sounds ludicrous. Ugly, expensive, and requires an always-on, guaranteed 100% foolproof object avoidance system, so the car doesn't run over toys, pets, or toddlers as it shuffles back and forth under the lens.
You may say it's a "concept car" to promote solar power, but believe me - this stupidity isn't doing solar power any favors.
That's right: it absorbs the radiation recieved and can only thermalise it.
Oh, hang on, no, the solar panel actually can do something with the energy other than thermalise it! It can turn it into electricity!
So it being dark isn't really a problem: it would be the same if it were brilliant white, but less effective.
But I guess it's an electric car, therefore it cannot ever work. Because.
Yup . . . THIS is the "hot new car" Ford was promising us!
He is British...
...kids playing under the fresnel lens again?
How long will be battery last?
How green is it produced and destroyed?
How much will a replacement cost?
Our energy problems have less to do with creating power as they do with retaining it. Create a cheap, light, environmentally safe, long lasting battery and EVs may actually become mainstream.
Why not just cover the car with solar cells? A bunch of MPPT controllers can then charge the batteries, or provide power while its driving. That way if part of the car is covered with shade, or facing away from the sun, other surface cells can continue to provide a charge. With just double the surface cells, it would easily be possible to charge the vehicle in a day, and in a small town without tall buildings, it would be conceivable for a courier van to run mostly on solar power.
Personally I think if the car was covered in solar cells, it could be made to look nice, rather than having some ugly big panels on the roof. Solar panels are coming down in price to the point where they cost 10% of what they did 5 years ago and it is stupid to only have two or 3 small panels on the roof only.
So there are no black cars?
I really don't get it why people are prepared to deliberately pretend to be far more stupid than they are just to try to find something negative about a technology they do not like.
Where is the focal point? I really hope that there isn't a really solid focal point. Oh look the people thought they were ants. Not to mention that things like cats like to sleep in warm places.
There is another problem. The typical commuter is away from their car port during the best daylight hours.
That said, this would be perfect for me. I don't drive a car much so a solar panel would mean that I would plug the car in very rarely. I would love to drive for a year or more, check the charging logs and see that I have given the utility/petro fat cats $2.15 for the entire year. Also these freznel setups would probably be cheap enough that you could have one at the cottage and whatnot. Also they should be compatible from one car to the next.
But I suspect it would be great to have a solar panel on the car sipping up a bit extra energy while you work but that at home you would have a battery bank charging from dedicated solar panels. This being the key to all electric cars and solar energy; great batteries.
of those solar panels on it. It will charge while I drive?
The article clearly differentiates between the solar powered electric concept car and its hybrid predecessor.
This is a solar powered electric car. NOTHING 'hybrid' about it!!