• Cethin
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    3 hours ago

    Yeah, this is why it’s dumb. When is a parked car parked ideally to capture sunlight? Just put the money into solar panels on a building or in a field, charge your car when parked, and you have a much better and cheaper product. The solar panels on the building can also be used to power other things, unlike the car. It’s such a stupid idea and will be very expensive to get custom panels for the car that aren’t super fragile and also efficient. Just spend that money and larger cheap panels. This is purely to get VC funding and nothing more. It’s a waste of time and energy.

    • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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      3 hours ago

      In america? Litterally everywhere. Even driving down the highway would get trickle charging.

      If your expecting to fully charge from the panels, youre gonna have a bad day. But every extra mile would overcome the cost over its lifetime.

      • Cethin
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        3 hours ago

        Again, I said ideally. When will it ever outperform solar on a rooftop of the same size? How much more size could you get for the price?

        It would never overcome its opportunity cost, even if it recovers it’s cost (which you’re speculating on and have no idea of the cost). You could spend the extra money for a solar car, or spend the money for rooftop solar. Rooftop solar will always outperform it for the price, so you have a negative opportunity cost.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 hours ago

      I mean, it’d be cool to get a couple miles of range here and there without having to plug in. Could make for a nice little errand vehicle in a smaller city where there aren’t trees or tall buildings to block light and you just park in a driveway or apartment parking lot. If say the battery itself would be big enough for an 80 mile range, I could see some people never having to plug this car in.

      It’ll come down to price, of course. If it’s cheap, it could be cool and useful. If it’s expensive, it’s a novelty and would have no practical reasoning to be purchased.

      • Cethin
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        2 hours ago

        It will not be cheap. It’s going to be the price of an EV + the price of custom shaped solar + the price of R&D + the price of being a niche product and not having the efficiency of scale. It’ll be a novelty without any doubt.