A more "affordable" Tesla

[Harry P.]

If someone did that Fisker in plastic, I'd buy one. That's a pretty car.

On the subject of all-electric cars and range, it suprises me that the manufacturers aren't building photo-voltaic cells into the roofs. The prices of those have started to come down dramatically, and would, at worst case, give you a limp-home mode until you get to your house, office, mall or a plug.

Charlie Larkin

Could have something to do with rollover/crashworthy standards? Just a guess, I may be totally off-base. But that does sound smart... on a sunny day, if you're parked outside (say, at work), you could be charging up your car for absolutely no cost.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Thin-film photovoltaics are being used on some electric sport-aircraft, and have been incorporated into a few concept cars. The drawbacks to using them on production vehicles are currently 1) fragility....they won't last long enough in an environment that includes car-washes and people throwing briefcases and purses on the roof; and 2) they don't lend themselves easily to forming compound-curves. Though a car roof isn't heavily sculpted, it's curvy enough to preclude being easily covered by a material that is normally formed in very flat sheets. Some of the thin-films will happily flex in one dimension, but not 2 simultaneously.

Here's a quick overview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_film_solar_cell

The technology is developing rapidly however, with paint-on solar cell material becoming a reality. Once the durability issues are solved, we will see it becoming common.

[sjordan2]

Thin-film photovoltaics are being used on some electric sport-aircraft, and have been incorporated into a few concept cars. The drawbacks to using them on production vehicles are currently 1) fragility....they won't last long enough in an environment that includes car-washes and people throwing briefcases and purses on the roof; and 2) they don't lend themselves easily to forming compound-curves. Though a car roof isn't heavily sculpted, it's curvy enough to preclude being easily covered by a material that is normally formed in very flat sheets. Some of the thin-films will happily flex in one dimension, but not 2 simultaneously.

Here's a quick overview.

http://en.wikipedia....film_solar_cell

The technology is developing rapidly however, with paint-on solar cell material becoming a reality. Once the durability issues are solved, we will see it becoming common.

Interesting. I learned from AACA forums that many hardtop cars in the 30s had canvas rooftop covers because the technology to manufacture the cars with a completely smooth and rounded metal roof was either too expensive or too difficult for some manufacturers to deal with, so they left a hole to be covered with canvas. Several Rolls-Royce coachbuilders were among them.

Maybe Art can weigh in on this.

Edited July 22, 2012 by sjordan2

[Harry P.]

Seems to me that the cells needn't be compound-curved. You could have a steel inner roof panel (to maintain rollover standards), then smaller flat photovoltaics arranged in series in an array to sort of conform to the curvature of the roof, then a compound-curve glass roof on top. I suppose cost would be the hangup.

[rel14]

Don't get it,,its been proven a hundred times, and thousands of pattons that you can get 100 to 250 miles per Gallon,

But ya want electric,, I SAVE THRITY DOLLARS IN GAS,,AND MY ELECTRIC BILL GOES UP A HUNDRED,,,

and just were i'm i going to plug it in on hwy 75,,and how long will that take?? Plus the eletric car cost a few thousand more

then a normal car,,, I DON'T SEE WERE THE SAVING ARE,, I pay more for a electric car, to save gas,,and pay more for electric,,

The math doesn't add up..

[Harry P.]

Don't get it,,its been proven a hundred times, and thousands of pattons that you can get 100 to 250 miles per Gallon

That's one of the oldest old wive's tales in the book.

Seriously. If you could make a gas-powered internal-combustion car that got 250 MPG, they'd be making them! Whoever made it would sell hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them and make a huge profit! Do you think the automakers would be spending millions of dollars trying to wring out a few more MPG from their cars if they could build a 250 MPG car?

Why aren't there any? Simple. It's impossible.

[Joe Handley]

I think the Leaf and current Prius have solar cells in the roof as at least an option and I thought the Karma did too. This would help and they're getting fairly cheap too, Dad saw that Menard's has a small solar battery tender for vehicles that sit for a long time on sale for $15............need to go get one for my Jeep now that I think of it..............

[charlie8575]

Solar battery tender? Sounds interesting.

Right now, my mother isn't driving too much. We might go get one of those for her car. I'll have to see if I can find one locally.

Charlie Larkin

[Joe Handley]

It just plugs into the cigarette lighter and sits on the dash, should put just enough juice in to keep it topped off.

[charlie8575]

Very cool; if I can't find one of those locally, I may ask to arrange something with you.

Charlie Larkin

[dustym]

I think they're back in production now, seen a few running around St. Charles in the past several months now too. IIRC their sales picked back up when gas prices started heading back up past $4 a gallon. I heard of the fires and even looked to see what I could a few months back. The ones that NHTSA managed to start on fire were wrecked for side impact into a pole test had the case for the batteries punctured when the driver's seat mount welded to the floor was struck during the impact with the pole, which shoved the mount into the battery tunnel collapsing it into a somewhat vulnerable portion of the pack. They then left the whole car or the now damaged battery pack removed from the car (I've heard both) upside down outside for nearly a month without discharging them before the batteries shorted out from the leaking coolant actually caught fire. Considering how those cars are constructed, to get that exact same wreck to happen in real life would probably take some pretty incredible odds (like sole mega billions lotto winner odds) to actually happen.

Here's one of the tests that caused the damage to the battery.

And here's what GM did to fix the problem.

[media=]

I had also found some garage fires that when I had last checked were Volt related because there were Volts in them at the time of the fires. One was a million dollar home with an attached garage that caught fire and what they had found in the investigation was that the fire had started on the opposite side of the garage from where the involved Volt was charging and had the big Titan P/U based Infinity SUV separating the two sides. One thing that was found during the investigation was that the car had been charging during much of the fire until the computer involved in the charging process noted things were getting too hot (likely do to the fire approaching the car) and shut it off. I do remember reading that GM and Nissan were involved in that and some of the right wing members tin foil hat set figured that GM pressured that finding into happening (I'm not buying that though) and I'm not sure why Nissan was there, unless they're using some of the same components as GM for the Leaf or because an Infinity was also involved.

The second one was also an attached garage on a 40+ year old home with it's original wiring and a Suzuki Samari that was also converted to 100% Electric Power. Apparently the owners had set the garage up for 240v service themselves (again with wiring that was original to the house) and were "fast charging" both the Volt and the Sammi at the same time. When I last looked into it, it was beginning to sound like they suspected that the wiring the garage portion of the house was severely overloaded by trying to fast charge both vehicles at the same time and the wiring went up taking the garage and vehicles with. Luckily there was at least a double layer of drywall between the garage and the rest of the house, which saved the home portion of the structure.

i REPORTED THIS POST TWICE DUE TO THE COMMENT IN RED. iTS UNCALLED FOR ON A MODEL SITE.

Thank you.

Tim

[SSNJim]

To get back on topic, I went to the local Tesla dealer during lunch. They had a black one on the showroom floor labeled "Beta Prototype Vehicle"; it's a nice looking car. Of course, there was an extension cord running under the car and plugged into a floor outlet....

What looks to be the grill appears to be a solid piece of plastic surrounded by chrome, with a small opening at the bottom. They had the hood and hatchback open; very odd not to see any kind of a propulsion system. I would imagine it's similar to the Tesla Roadster. They have a Roadster chassis on display in the showroom, too. It's pretty much a flat, thick platform with the twin motors/transmission mounted aft of the rear wheels. The driveline is very low; none of it extends above the brake rotors.

The range is what's stopping me. I think the article said it can be charged in 4-57 hours. Still a little too long for my tastes, but if you use a properly designed charging station, the time would be closer to 4 hours. If you unplug your Dremel tool to plug in your car, it will be closer to 57.

Neat technology. I can't wait to see where it goes. Supposedly the Roadster is comparable in performance to a Mustang GT; the GT will out run darn near anything built in the 60's with the exception of a few big block Corvettes. I think we'll be in the third performance renaissance once EVs get the details sorted out.

[moparmagiclives]

I happened once, and it will again soon.... "Man this new gasoline engine is so cool, I can load up my whole family and all their stuff and head across the pass, at 70 mph."

Battery powered Electric cars are a neat novelty, but very unrealistic. Untill we see nuclear or better hydrogen power plants on board,, they will all be short range, long charged, expencive things we read about.