Portable solar panels to charge your car?

Hey with all us observant and caring current Prius regular and Prime owners with good ideas' we can surely help evolve the product. We'd encourage and promote the Prii even more enthusiastically, and I only see a much more rapid growth in sales.
Our upcoming unstoppable gasoline price increases, will "fuel" greater sales of hybrids. Check out pricing hikes already underway thanks to hurricane Harvey, which will continue to grow in California thanks to new taxes and upcoming shutdowns.

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good news hurricane, whoda thunk?

 

Not just gasoline price increases as a "good" thing, but the construction industry and all its affiliates will be raking in the dough. I wouldn't want to be a big insurance company shareholder with Texas interests right now though. You've gotta feel terrible for all the poor victims of that tragedy. It's all dependent on your perspective. The odd thing about life!

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Already done. It is called 'grid tied home roof solar PV system'. And it also works for essentially all other plug-in car models too.

As a bonus, it feeds all its energy production capacity into the grid, even when the plug-in car is not plugged in, or is fully charged. I.e. it has a far better load factor than a car-only system.

 

i'm guessing a million bucks.

 

Every now and then Elon gets asked this question about putting solar panels on a Tesla. He said to have any meaningful range you would have a have a fold out system that tracks the sun and takes up the space of about a parking stall. Even then it isn't very many miles relative to what you could get sitting at a Supercharger a few minutes (many of which are solar powered).

In other words....not even close to feasible.

 

Let's see,if you lived in Tornado Alley, you could park your Prime in a suitable spot, set the 4 anchors, erect the collapsible fan assembly on your roof, verify your inverter/battery status, and in something like 20 hours, your traction battery could be charged!! Sounds pretty straightforward to me!!

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Hey Bisco, would that fit into our million dollar budget??!!

 

Mr. Musk is a successful genius and visionary. But, I would prefer being inspired by individual innovations such as Mr. Chris Jones', defying common sense (e.g., too heavy, too small a capacity, etc.) and make it work for his/her needs.

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Go for it if you want, but financially and environmentally you would be immensely better off just putting some more panels on your house.

 

double post

 

I do not totally agree with Elon Musk, although I agree a Telsa Model-S may not be the best market for solar roof. The Toyota Prime solar can reportedly get up to about 10% (I forget the exact number) of its mileage from thin air- no gaso, no elec grid. That is amazing. If you are Japan and you have no fossil fuels and you are short electricity, that's a huge accomplishment.

Our view in USA is we are affluent so we can do whatever we want, drive as many miles we want, generate as much elec as we want. And then it just becomes a political battle over what American's think is the politically correct energy choice.

 

Yes, I've read 3.7 miles per day if it is parked perfectly in the sun all day on a cloudless day. Not bad at all, but there are better options with those resources for most people. I'm sure it is great for some though.

 

what's the difference what car you are adding it to? it either makes sense for you, or it doesn't.

 

Well for as long as the electric prices stay in check, otherwise we're all up the proverbial creek!!!

 

My Prime Solar edition has generated 40kWh so far (the picture below has been shoot on May 27) .The solar panel can store energy only when the traction battery is not full, and when the car is parked.
During the drive the solar panel helps the A/C system,
In a good summer day the amount of energy that can be recovered from the sun increases the range of 6-7 km.
The sun can charge the battery up to 90% (LiOn batteries do not like to be sitting full charged).
In my opinion this is a very efficient system, I love my solar Prime.

 

That's impressive number. What is the duration for this number? Days, weeks, or months? I wish US version have this option.

 

It's hard to say, I've bought the car in october 2017 but as I explained before the solar panel does not work if the car is connected to the grid, or the battery is full.

 

What I meant was not the precise hours they charged, but rather what interval of time for this record is for. If 40kWh has been generated by the panel since you purchased the car, that would be over 7 months, then it may not be so impressive, compared to say if you got this number of electricity generated in one week.