New Solar Panels for Hybrid Cars Improve MPG

I am not going to attempt to double check your figures.. I'm sure that sounds right....
But the problem is that there is no battery storage?.... so according to your figures if you drove out in the open sunlight for a day, as you say, you would save 1/9 a gallon of gas.
So if your getting 50MPH, you would save about 5.5 miles worth of driving in a whole day....

I wonder how many miles would be driven in a whole day?... maybe 500?... if so that would be about 1/100 % savings... not 10%.

 

Ha!.... Well I feel sorry for anyone who tries to sell bogus stuff to the prius crowd!... these are not the normal citizens out here!

It had better be one heck of a scam to pull the wool over this many smart people... the cool thing about this forum is we all take care of each other and watch each others back.

I hope this guy has something more or it could be quite embarrasing?
If this is truly a scam, he deserves what he gets.

One the other hand, if we are missing something here since he has not had a chance to defend or explain his product.... I'm sure everyone here is at full attention to be understanding and interested in a good product.

We are all excited at the prospect of furthur improving upon mileage, but if someone tries to exploit that zeal that we all have, I fear he will recieve little mercy.

This is indeed a tough crowd!

 

Exactly!..... what he said!

 

Very well put... I think that message expressed at least my sentiments in a very professional manner.
thanks...

 

Well I'll be the first to apologize for jumping to conclusions if this guy can prove his product, ... especially the part about 10% gas savings and it somehow showing on the MFD screen instantly!... that doesn't even make sense.
Are we sure this guy even has a prius?.... he doesn't act like he knows how they work?

I'm not sure I want to give 2 grand to someone for a modification if they can't even figure out how to register on a forum?

 

We might need to wait a while on that. My left hand pinky is now is a full body cast. Fortunatly it was such a clean cut, the doctor gave me good feelings on the recovery. Now, my dinners are restricted to stoffers mac and chesse baked in my $6000 profressional stove.

When I went to emergency, I was mad at my myself for being so stupid, upset that I had just a serious injury, and, like my cats; I hate going to the vet. I told my Dr "I hate doctors", while he was working with the fish hook and line (bad timing). Well, what I really ment to say was that "I that hate going to see doctors". It took 7 stitches. A lot or a little pinky.

I sent him a note of thanks and gratitude.

William

 

This thread concerns an attractive low-voltage PV add-on for Prius, and it's no surprise that it has attracted attention from this efficiency oriented crowd. To round out the discission I would like to mention that flexible solar panels are available from several sources (Unisolar among them) and that potential DIY-ers also ought to understand maximum power point trackers. Google away.

An additional advantage for 12 volt support would be the ability to operate the sound system, etc., all day while stopped without the engine cyling on and off.

As far as feeding the high-voltage system, a reminder to visit this web site:

http://www.lapprenewables.com/index.html

 

Still a no go unless you put more heavy batteries in, then you carry them around with you too! When we are playing with 10000 watts from coasting and 50000 watts brakeing , its hard to get excited about 30 watts only while the sun is shining.

 

The "an overall 10 percent improvement" is completely doubtful.

Let's assume we got 44MPG with it and 40MPG without it.
We save 0.0023 gallon/mile. That gas has about 76Wh energy and we can use 27Wh energy under 35% efficiency.

If vehicle runs at 36MPH, it is 1 mile/minutes.
It is required 1,600W(consume 27Wh energy in one minute) to improve the mileage (40MPG to 44MPG).
The 30W kit supplies only 0.2% of the required energy.

Ken@Japan

 

Its funny how many different ways we all look at it, and it all comes up wrong.
This guy better go sell his merchandise on ebay where they don't know better.

 

Maybe we should all kick in 2 bucks and have a drawing where the winner would have this mod installed on his/her Prius and then report back to us about how it works.
We could factor in the solar exposure differential for, say me in Seattle, if the winner lives in Santa Fe.

B

 

Count me out of the raffle! I don't want that guy messing with my car! His web site is shallow! There's hardly any real information on it. He specifically says that his mileage claims are based solely on his own driving of his own car. No corrections for break-in (nor does he tell us the mileage at the time he installed the panels) or for weather. Hey, DaveInOlyWA gets better mileage with an unmodified car than this guy gets with his mod. So he wants two grand to charge the (tiny) 12-v battery that's always fully charged anyway. And claims that keeping the 12-v battery charged improves mileage 10%?

Hey, anyone that believes that, somebody ought to sell him some magnets to put on his fuel line!

 

Hey Daniel, Where can I get those magnets? I've been looking for them for years!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

I kind of think it would be unfortunate to "reward" this guy with $2200 just so we can say we were fair. He should come up with some more rigorous data before we even entertain the notion. But if he wants to loan his device to someone here for some unbiased testing, I'm sure that could be arranged....


Joe

 

Yea.. thats aweful generous.. he needs to prove and market his own product and first of all prove why it cost 2200.00

I would really LOVE to see someone come out with a similiar product with very efficient panels and maybe cover the hood and top and be much more powerful... hopefully without the loss of conversion, put the panels in series to produce around 210 volts or so.

They need to make a few hundred watts to even talk about it.... Good luck!.. I'll be there to buy when you get it done!

Maybe we could figure out a way to utilize the wind resistance against the cars body to make power without increasing wind resistance on the car?.. Good luck on that one too!

How about use the heat "and" the wind flow of the exhaust! :huh:

How about mount a laucher to cast a rope and hook to the 18 wheeler in front of us?
Hey.. now there's a thought!.. we can call it "RR" for (regen rope), better known as "redneck tow rope!" :lol:
We could even slightly apply the brakes while in tow to regen power and make hydrogen from our onboard jacuzzi tank!....
Hey we could even mount a sail on top when its windy that drops down for traffic lights?

Anybody can come up with a cool idea and sell "the idea" with a bogus contraption of pretty nothingness..... Lots of cool ideas... making them work for good is where the real genius lies!

 

Perhaps we could just do a raffle and put together our own system. Or, perhaps we could just each kick in enough money to build a system that WE spec'd out and let one of the more savy gear heads with CAN-View and a laptop do some real analysis. We could probably devise all kinds of different experiments to carry out. It'd be a great learning experience for those who wanted to be involved and those that were just lurking and reading the posts.

 

Great idea!

We just need two big things to get started:

1) 5 metres squared (1 kW) of Sunpower A300 cells

2) Steve Lapp!

 

Actually, folks, I was kidding about the raffle, not because of the logistics, as Evan mentioned, but because I don't think this guy is legitimate. If you go to his website, you'll find virtually no documentation or product specs. I don't think I'd want someone messing with my Prius unless I had way more assurance than I have now, that the guys doing the mods had a good product and knew what they were doing.

On the other hand, maybe this guy is like Mary Kaye Cosmetics when she worked out of her garage, or Bill Gates/Paul Allen as teenagers.