No weight or vibration requirements, can use the electricity for your house too.
The only downside is you need to plug in.
Governments will likely be slow to implement on street charging. There is a market for something like this, if it works as well as they say - which I doubt.
[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [2] https://www.mortgagefinancegazette.com/market-news/housing/t...
[1] https://www.which.co.uk/news/2017/07/do-solar-panels-affect-...
Then you probably live in a city and would be better served by transport modes where you don't need a big upfront cost, and other expenses and hassle of owning your own vehicle. I mean bus, tram, metro rail, taxi, uber.
You can always qualify with further "what if you..." to find someone who matches this case. But by the time you're done it won't be a viable number of customers.
The cars are used to get away from crowds and from the city, to have some privacy and comfort and go out into nature.
There is black-and white reasoning about this because the maths around "what is the surface area of the car, how much charge can it generate and how far can it go on that charge" is also black-and white. And not favourable.
As the other reply says, this is not "the debate of electric cars"; this is the debate about this specific electric car design, with the solar panels on the car.
It's not talking about the current argument. It's saying the current argument shares the property of arguing against the use-cases of people outside the target demographic.
People who argue "electric cars will never be viable" (and not anyone in this thread) commonly complain about lack of supercharging speed, despite that being a feature that most people (and all initial adopters) will only use once or twice a year, if ever. This will not be a problem for a long time, as right now only ~1% of car users have an EV and that won't be a major problem until we start running out of ICE car-owning EV buyers who don't need that, which is at least at the 50% mark.
This particular car is priced quite nicely even if it came without this. So does not sound like there is a lot of extra cost.
I'm guessing manufacturers spend more on things like seat warmers or other stuff manufacturers put in cars these days. Also these things are probably more likely to break.
And if you consider the environment, imagine the energy savings over the life time of the vehicle not charging from (potentially) dirty sources. It would only be a waste if that energy wasn't used which would require you to religiously plug it in the second you stop driving.
Also, panels can be recycled (just like cars and batteries) and mostly don't contain that much nasty stuff to begin with. So, I don't see the problem here necessarily.
I can imagine this seems absurdly low for suburban America.
Otherwise, 15 min trips become 60+ ones which makes everything impossible.
People seem to think that just because things don't work where they live, that they must be impossible.
Even just getting around in inside the city, driving takes on average half the time of public transport. Shopping is much more convenient. It IS impossible to have public transport that delivers the same usefulness, speed and flexibility.
Owning a car still gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility to do what you want, when you want it. Which is not covered by car sharing at all.
I would gladly own a cheaper car only to do a weekly shopping trip and a weekly nature trip, something like 25km per week. Seems ridiculous to own a car for that short distances, but it gives a LOT of quality of life and I would gladly pay for it instead of using car sharing.
I live in a big city (London). Owning a car for me would be frankly insane. Where would I put it? If I was communing again, could not possibly take it in to work, there would be nowhere to put it at that end either, when I finally got through the traffic.
It is both much more practical and cheaper to use bicycle or bus and metro rail for commuting; taxi, minicab, or uber for other urban journeys; and car rental for weekends away.
I get that cases may vary. it's different further out from the city. But the idea that car = freedom, always, is very silly. I owned car here once, and it was liberating to get rid of it.
It seems that you have problems with your shared transport in your area, it sucks but maybe the better solution is better shared transport, not more private cars?
I live in a big city. Not owning a car for me would be frankly insane. How would I get to work? It'd take ~2 hours with public transport only.
It is both much more practical and safer to use a car rather than a bicylce (too dangerous) or bus (cannot reach where I go) and metro rail (Have to walk an hour for nearest station) for commuting; taxi, minicab, or uber for other urban journeys; and car rental for weekends away (all are too expensive in the long run).
I get that cases may vary. it's different in other cities. But the idea that car = burden, always, is very silly. I was unable to go where I want/need to go quickly until I got a car, and it was liberating.
There, fixed it for my case. :)
Of course, YMMV. :)
That's a nice full circle. :)
Problem is people don't pay the real cost of their car, it's subsidised by free pollution
Of course. OTOH, Instead of using my car, congesting traffic and spewing smoke from my back twice everyday, I'd only use my car whenever I need it for these heavy tasks.
Then, use public transport most of the time which possibly runs on electric and do a little more walking every day.
Perfect for people like my mother would be a self driving car that you can summon to your door in a few minutes. But even calling a taxi takes half an hour+. So it would have to be faster than that.
- bus: a few times a week (if at all), because of cost efficiency
- taxi: hours, + only if you book at least a day in advance, because they’re just not sitting there waiting for a call, they’re busy towards where people are/go, which is, like, the other way.
Throw in no/unstable/limited power grid, and you double down on one of the use cases.
I can find half a dozen car sharing vehicles in a 400m radius from my house.
Urban planning does not equal trying to get everyone to live in packed apartments.
You've got 150 people in a village
Half drive, so that's 75
You've got 10% of people who want a car for this sort of distance (3000km), so that's 8. Of those chances are at least some of the time almost all of them will want to use it over the same period. Maybe you can get away with 6 or 7 cars instead of 8, with some risk, but that's not saving much, and you're adding a lot of inconvenience (car won't be in the right place), overhead, and risk (what if you need a car now and there's none available?)
If you want to tackle the externalities of the resources producing the car, tax them at the same rate as taxing other resources.
Of course that's a big village, what about a group of half a dozen isolated houses 2 miles from the village?
Why would peak load be that high, though?
Solar charging ensures you only rarely have to plug it in to top it up, which is convenient. It also means that if you leave it sitting outside for long periods of time, it will be topped up rather than slightly drained when you get back to it. That convenience is not worth a lot of course but solar panels are cheap. And also, not having to pay for the electricity is nice.
E.g. my mother has a car that averages less than 3000 km/year (seriously). With this, she'd never have to plug it in (or rather visit a petrol station). My parents live in a small village and most of the trips are basically 15km round trips to a near by city. Something like this but a bit cheaper would be perfect for them and decimate their fuel expenses.
Will this cover all your needs? No of course not. But solar panels are cheap so the added cost of this convenience might be worth it.