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BMW Unveils the Solar Charging Carport of the Future
cartechboy (2660665) writes "The carport hasn't changed much over the years. Made out of wood, aluminum or steel, they are simple structures meant to cover your vehicle from the elements. BMW has just revealed a concept carport that takes these structures into the future. Made out of bamboo and carbon fiber, this concept carport features solar panels that harvest the sun's energy and use it to charge your BMW i-vehicle. "With the solar carport concept we opted for a holistic approach: not only is the vehicle itself sustainable, but so is its energy supply," explained Tom Allemann of BMW Designworks USA. "This is therefore an entirely new generation of carports that allows energy to be produced in a simple and transparent way. It renders the overarching theme of lightweight design both visible and palpable." The entire thing is quite beautiful, and could be the way to make not only charging your electric car sustainable, but also building your carport."
That's the only way electric CAN be better than BP fuel.
How long would it take to charge your car with a 15ft x 20ft panel? Hours? Days? Weeks?
(Is it just me or does BMW make an incredible effort at failing to design pretty cars?)
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
and what will the other 99.99% of the population be able to afford???
A subsidized bus pass that some city with a non-functional, useless public transit system has blackmailed out of a high tech company, out of anger for them running a private workable public transit system and demonstrating that it's the idiots in charge of administering the public transit system who are fault for it being crappy, rather than funding or some other reason?
..., a qualification which usually applies to "concepts". It's a nice idea to charge your car using solar panels, but if you're commuting, your car will not be sitting in that car port during the most sunny hours of the day. Besides, you can put those solar panels anywhere; choose the most efficient spot, which isn't necessarily the carport roof. Also: simply laying down solar panels on a flat roof is inefficient; you'll want to mount them at a 30 or so degree angle facing south.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
My car generally sits in my car-port at night.
Unless it comes with very expensive secondary storage batteries, it's as much use to me as tits on a bull.
Glad to read that they at least suggest that this thing gets connected to the main electicity grid (so they also deliver electricity when the car isn't charging, which is most of the time). Also, I guess you should just charge the car from the grid as well. Many people will tend to drive in the day, and charge at night, so, off the grid really seems silly. A rough estimate tells me that the panels could deliver as much as 10 kW (if you're lucky), so size-wise this is not enough to charge the car quickly. Another reason to stay on the grid.
So, using a flat surface of the carport roof for solar panels? Good idea. But it's just not really relevant to involve the car in this story, as you'll be charging it from the grid, like everyone else with an electric car.
So, you install solar cells, but you only actually get to use them when your car is in the carport - otherwise they're a wasted investment. Given that solar cells already cost more per kwH that most other types of electrical generation, that makes a whole lot of sense - not.
Anyway, is "functional art" mean to be a euphemism for "ugly as sin"?
If you want to put solar cells on a roof and attach them to the grid, more power to you. But that's not what they're touting here.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
It's "holistic." That means they take 20 electrons from the sun, dilute them into a swimming pool vat of water, then dump the water into your vehicle. Voila, fully charged!
If you read the fine print, it's a grid-tie system, it feeds the electricity to the house/grid for net metering if a car isn't sucking down all it can provide and more.
Anyway, is "functional art" mean to be a euphemism for "ugly as sin"?
It's also not to my taste, but I can see somebody liking it. It has more 'soul' than conventional painted beams would.
I don't read AC A human right
And you'd have to park the car there during the day. Most drivers use their vehicle during the day and leave it parked at night.
If you're going to install solar panels then putting them on a car port is often not going to be the smart thing to do. You want to pick the place with the best exposure to the sun, which will often be the house roof. And you don't want to use the power generated just to charge up the car - if you've got the panels you might as well feed the power into the house for general domestic use. There is some additional overhead in sorting that out - buying an inverter and doing the wiring - worth it in the long run if you're buying and installing the panels anyway.
Double checked my math. More like 22 kwh, or 66 miles worth of electricity a day.
I don't read AC A human right
Ok if you don't use your car for a month and don't want it become empty (though it would likely have a hard time keeping up with the Tesla discharge bug). But for serious recharging? Not really.
I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but to this beholder it looks like something that would drive property values down, not up.
As I am currently looking into buying an electrical car, I was considering doing (almost) exactly this : Installing solar cells on the roof of the house to charge the car. It wouldn't even take that much solar cells; 20 square meters would charge the car in a reasonable amount of time. Free energy, right?
While considering the idea, a fundamental problem stuck me: Most of the time when the Sun shines, the car isn't parked at home. It is either parked in front of my office or, when I'm not working, I'm driving somewhere else, enjoying the Sun that could have charged my car. The solution to this issue was to add batteries to the concept, in order to store the Suns energy as I am away and transfer this energy back to the car at night when I am home.
Considering the car has a capacity exceeding 20 kWh, the battery solutions becomes extremely expensive - as expensive as the car itself actually (if not more). Without the battery, it's a nice expensive systems that will produce a lot of power when I don't need it. It's always possible to sell back the excess power to the utilities, but you get a loss let out of it this way and it makes your life quite complicated.
Forgetting this fundamental limitation, after doing a lot of calculation, it turned out that it would take over 20 years to amortize; and I doubt the battery system would last 20 years under the kind of stress it would be put too (nearly daily full deep cycles). And this is assuming the normal electricity prices. In fact, the charge stations are highly subsidized and your are basically paying the price large industry would pay for electricity. Suddenly your amortization period goes up over 40 years.
It's not (yet) worth it, although the technology is actually there and ready.
Conclusion : Power accumulation solution in the 20 - 40 kWh range are too expensive and power is too cheap.
A typical sedan gets about 30 mpg. Figure the average car travels 15000 miles in a year, or 41 miles per day on average. That means it burns 1.37 gallons of gas each day.
A gallon of gas has about 120 MJ. Gasoline engines are about 25% efficient, so the 1.37 gallons of gas consumed represents 123.3 MJ lost as heat, and about 41 MJ of energy used to push the car each day.
Charging a battery is about 75%-85% efficient; call it 80%. Realistically you'd need another battery to sit at the carport charging (leaving the car parked there all day to charge means you can't drive it). This battery would also help even out the cloudy days with the sunny days. So since you're charging from battery-to-battery, you're hitting this 80% efficiency loss twice. Electric motors are about 90% efficient (that's peak, but then so is the 25% efficiency for an ICE). So for an EV to put 41 MJ into pushing the car, it needs 41/(.8*.8*.9) = 71.2 MJ sent to the carport's battery.
PV panels generate about 150 W/m^2 peak. Multiply by the average capacity factor for the U.S. of 0.145 to get 22 W/m^2 on average. Multiply by 24 hours and you get 1.9 MJ/m^2 per day.
So to charge your typical sedan EV entirely with solar power to drive it 41 miles per day, your carport would need 71.2/1.9 = 37.5 square meters of solar panels. Or 404 square feet for those in the U.S. That's a mighty big carport.
Solar panels over a carport is fine, but I'd like to see them over more farms. Besides providing clean energy, the solar panels would protect the crops from the hot sun (a big problem in the US midwest in 2012), and from hailstorms. (Well-built solar panels can withstand hailstorms.)
During a regular rain (not a hailstorm), the panels could be tilted vertically, so that the rain was distributed evenly among the crops.
I guess the biggest problem a farmer would have with this, would be driving his tractor over ground that had lots of poles sticking out of the ground, supporting the panels.
As if a BMW owner will live in a place with a "car port" and not a garage.
No the 20 something working at walmart that is driving the beat up 325i does not count.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I even wrote to them, put some solar cells in the sun roof, use it to drive a couple of vent fans for hot days. Usually on the days I need it, there is plenty of sun light. I think some old car, may be Mazda Millennia, replacement for their 929, had it. But none of the car makers provide it. I am sure this idea is patented by someone and asking either too much, or these companies are stingy. Are there after market solar driven vent fans for parked cars?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The worst part of the design is the gaps between the solar panels.
Which means when it rains, water drips from the panels on to you and your car.
I mean. isn't the main purpose of a carport to protect your car from the sun and the rain?
This is a concept. Concepts can be improved!
As long as your commute doesn't run your battery down completely, and as long as you charge tend to recharge more than you discharge through use, a car port like this will keep you topped up.
This could also be hooked up to your mains to supply most of your own electricity.
Maybe, if car makers came together and created standard battery sizes, capacities and forms, you could build in battery swap station to allow your battery to be recharged when you are not at home, and allow your EV to always be swapped onto the battery with the most charge.
I spent a few months living in Arizona some years back. I lived in an apartment complex where most of the space between the buildings was the carpark. The most coveted spaces were the ones that had a sort of awning or overhang, so that the car was out of direct sunlight. It made a huge difference in how hot the car got.
As an engineer, seeing this vast swath of paved-over space (more than an acre all told), some of which was itself covered with structures specifically intended to block the sun, I thought to myself: why in the hell don't they just cover the entire carpark, and cover it with solar panels, to boot? The complex could advertise itself as having all-shaded parking (and commensurate higher rent) and reduce its net electricity consumption. In sunny Arizona, such a project could have paid for itself in less than a decade; today, the economics are even more favorable.
My question is: why isn't this (grid-tied, solar panel-shaded parking lots) done by every piece of commercial real estate in sunny climes? You make greater use of a resource (land area), the tenants' cars end up cooler (you can charge higher rent for that), it has a more or less guaranteed return in a reasonable time span, and reduces operating expenses (lowered electric bills). See, for instance, the western parking lot at the Googleplex headquarters. Why isn't this done everywhere?
I really dont understand why they havnt used solar panels to cover the bodywork yet.
Add this to the breaking power charging, A car that can drive and charge at the same time, makes more sense to me.
Solar panels on the car could Increase the range, even if its only 5-20% and a free "low charge" rate when parked, cant go wrong.
Just wish they would spend less time on carbon fiber, more time to R&D for solar body panels.
All that expensive light weight carbon fiber is completely worth it because it will help my carp port accelerate faster when its picked up by a wind storm.
Something better when it comes down in price.
But I can still ask if the carport matches the drapes?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What are they thinking ? My carport is made of wood, concrete, and roofing material (roofing shingles,etc) In New England structures need to withstand 100mph wind gusts. It does happen. Winter Blizzard wind gusts have hit 80mph. Cold wind packs a punch. My next home improvement is going to involve replacing the decorative shutters with real working shutters. A large carport roof is a great place to locate solar panels. I'm still looking for a deal. Something that won't take 17 years to pay for itself. That is just stupid to me. I'm looking to build a cheap 5kw solar generator for $1,500.00. I bet it can be done. I
Google's bus system works better because it runs on a monster budget compared to public transit. Not because it's more clever or efficient. They're just willing to dump healthy sums of money into giving their employees a ride to work, because they have so much money they don't really know what to do with it (which is why they came up with Google X labs way back when - to find new things to do with the money).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Artist's depiction
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Carbon Fiber is a poor choice if you're looking at sustainability. It's energy intensive to make it. The primary components are made from petrochemicals. It's not recyclable. You would be better off using cast aluminum for the supports and arches -- while it takes a lot of energy to extract initially, it's fairly robust and can be readily recycled 20 or 30 years in the future when the carport gets replaced.
Thats odd, because Tesla is apparently building swapping stations & the Model S is quick swap capable. The biggest issue with battery swapping is the proprietary designed used so far by manufacturers & the lack of a network of swapping stations. Neither of which really matter for this specific situation as both batteries would be utilized by the vehicle owner. If battery swapping was so stupid your TV remote would come with integrated, non replaceable batteries.
Most people won't even check (let alone change) their own oil, or top off their own coolant, maintain tire pressure, or even top off their windshield washer fluid. Hell, most people look at it like it's a major chore to change the starter battery even when it's right up front, held down with one wrench size that fits both the retainer strap and the battery terminal cables.
Unless battery-swap is as simple as swapping batteries in those old full-sized VHS camcorders was then it's a nonstarter.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm sorry, I cant take any story seriously that has any reference to that P.O.S. i8. Seriously... a $135,000 car with a 7kW battery. Even the much-criticized Volt has a 17kW battery. "ooohh noes... its the Tesla killer!!" lulz.
Instead of spending money on a car port just to power their car it is more practical to feed the solar power back to the grid and/or powering devices that require power during the day.
That's actually just what they're doing, FTA: With the Wallbox Pro’s features, excess solar energy not needed to charge the car can be used by the connected house.
In short it's a grid tie system that advertises itself as a car charger. Only reason the electricity would go primarily 'to the car' would be proximity.
The interesting thought I had is that if you write the work description right you could get the 30% federal credit for the whole carport by claiming the support structures are there for the solar panels(and they technically are, so you might get away with it!), and note that the solar panels ARE the roof, not laying on top of the roof, so there's some substantial savings there.
I don't read AC A human right
In affluent and sunny enough areas they already install carports to help keep people's expensive cars cool and unfaded.
So I can see installing solar panel car shades to attract people through a combination of
1. Offering electric chargers(cheap enough)
2. Drawing the greens(they have solar panels!)
3. People who just hate hot cars(shelter!)
They might also realize significant savings through tax benefits because it's not a shelter(no incentives), it's a solar system mounted high enough to be out of the car's way(incentives).
I don't read AC A human right
Hell, most people look at it like it's a major chore to change the starter battery even when it's right up front, held down with one wrench size that fits both the retainer strap and the battery terminal cables.
For some people (not me) this kind of maintenance is a safety / reliability issue. In inexperienced hands, starter batteries can be very dangerous. More importantly, if a mistake is made or they get "stuck", someone with only 1 car could be stranded and face embarrassment in having to ask a friend for help, or have to get a tow or a mechanic who does housecalls. They would also not have a car to go to work, buy groceries, etc until the problem is fixed, which is to high a risk for many people.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Of course it needs to be simple (pop out the empty, shove in the charged), but from a design standpoint that should be relatively easy. For the really lazy it would probably be as simple as parking over a pad in your garage/drive where a mechanical rig would pull out the old battery and put in the new (Again Tesla has demonstrated such a system that does it in 90 seconds), but that would probably be relatively expensive. The average person is probably have a wheeled floor jack like device they would shove under their car that would remove the battery, in the corner of their garage they would have two charging ports, they would wheel the empty battery into one and then shove the "jack" under the charged battery and then wheel that one under their car. Its should be little more difficult than filling your gas tank & probably take less time.
Wow. Are people that stupid? At the very least they should maintain tire pressure, it is dead easy to do so and not doing it is dangerous (to their own lives and those of others, not only the hardware)
Oil and coolant levels are "trickier" but I would do it when I regularly operated a car, though I was barely able to tie my laces together. What's next, not being able to peel a banana?
Battery swaps are another problem for EVs though, might require the use of a crane or similar.. there's some ridiculous weight there. Lifting an electrical bicycle is fun enough.
The idea is to use solar to charge an electric car. OK, might work in some locations for some use cases, but hardly innovative. They had a architect design a support for the solar panels that some people may think is aesthetically pleasing. OK, but again not exciting. They want carbon fiber and bamboo. Again OK, but it could have been recycled plastic, or old aluminum cans, or adobe or pick your favorite "green" material of the day.
Why is this slashdot worthy? (except as an ad for BMW)
The two useful situations I could see (assuming the owner works a regular day schedule)
a) Multiple vehicles. One would be charging, the other could be on the road
b) Applying this to a parking garage. This might be better bang-for-the-buck - actually - if the top level had a solar collector and then had charging for EV's below it.
The battery may be heavy but a crane? You can lift an entire car with a simple little floor jack, I think the battery packs of your average EV are around 1000 lbs. You're not going lift/move it by hand but a simple jackable dolly or something should be able to move it easily. You could probably automate the process through some specialized dolly that would lift/lower & connect/disconnect the battery at the press of a button, all the person would have to do is wheel the battery to/from the charging station. This of course assumes that the vehicle would have enough clearance to remove the battery without raising the entire vehicle and a level concrete floor.
and if you have enough of them you can charge large batteries
has anyone not thought of this? front page article for obvious idea with a rather uninspired design to go with it "i are put solar panels on planks and park under it
Why not put solar panels on the car roof, hood, and trunk?
Sure, you have less surface area, but unlike the garage, they would always be within reach of the car and charging it. Those 5 and 6 series BMW's are nice and wide too!
Plus, if you like black cars, it would look cool.
And no whining about engineering or cost, BMW doesn't compromise on either of those fronts!
I'm pretty dumb. Can you come help me do the oil and coolant change in my Leaf?
Google's bus system works better because it runs on a monster budget compared to public transit. Not because it's more clever or efficient. They're just willing to dump healthy sums of money into giving their employees a ride to work, because they have so much money they don't really know what to do with it (which is why they came up with Google X labs way back when - to find new things to do with the money).
Nice theory. Except SF Muni is funded to the tune of almost $1B, less than 25% of which comes from fares; the rest of what they consider "revenue" comes from (in order):
- 32.7% Parking & Traffic fees and fines
- 26.0% General Fund
- 13.6% Operating grants (this includes the one from Google)
- 2.6% Advertising, interest, and service fees
- 1.2% Charges for taxi services (medalians, maintaining the Taxi monopoly, etc.)
Source: http://www.sfmta.com/sites/def...
So let me call BS right there. There's no way in hell Google is dropping $1B worldwide for all their transit to and from Google, even if you include worldwide, all of them.
Technically, if they could be ~23% more efficient, then Muni would not have to charge fares at all, and they'd still have adequate "revenue" to cover their operating costs.
No, but I probably could keep the power steering systems' fluids topped off, could keep the brake fluid reservoir topped off, and could recharge the refrigerant in the HVAC system.
Any other things that you want to be smug about?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The parking spaces at my office have included solar-powered car charging for 3+ years now. Welcome to the party, BMW.
I didn't think you'd compare the overall budget of SF Muni with the overall budget of Google's buses...of course SF Muni's budget is bigger overall, but Google clearly spends more per bus. Look at the buses for one thing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
but does it tolerate dessert like sun intensity, hail the sizeof softballs, and winds of tornados? Normal possible weather in Texas?