It doesn’t run at 127hp for an hour, you’d be going stupid fast.
My Nissan Leaf (which is decidedly more brick-shaped than a Tesla) cruises at 50mph at something like 10-15hp, or less than 12kW.
It takes surprisingly small amounts of power to maintain cruise speed on level ground.
(Obviously cruise power scales with the cube(?) of speed, so it’s not like 10x power gets you 10x speed)
> so there's something else obviously missing
Take a look at the shape of the car. Pretty much the entire thing is designed around minimizing drag.
Re:Solar Car Will Soon Hit Production
by moralestapia on Thursday July 14, 2022 @11:40PM
(#32104363)
I believe GP's comment presumes that you can't move anything with 1.86 hp, and that's kind of true; but you don't have 1.86 hp at any given moment, you have whatever energy you have stored in your battery across time.
A Tesla Model S Long Range has a 95kWh battery, following the logic you present (which makes sense, btw) that energy is equivalent to a 127hp motor working for an hour. A Tesla definitely has more power than this, and it can definitely run for more than hour, so there's something else obviously missing (is regen braking THAT good?).
That aside, your 1.34kW should be enough to charge a big battery like this one in about two weeks, since that Tesla gets about 400 miles of range and Apteras are supposedly much more efficient, I think one should be fine if you expect to drive no more than 20-30 miles per day.
I believe them.