Can Self-Charging Electric Vehicles Reach 60mph Using Renewable Energies?

[CharlohAwk]

Would it be possible to engineer a self-charging vehicle... Harnessing kinetic, solar, and wind energy?

 

[russ_watters]

Would it be possible to engineer a self-charging vehicle... Harnessing kinetic, solar, and wind energy?

Not enough to be perpetually self charging unless you only drive it a few miles a week. For continuous driving you can't come close without major sacrifices.

 

[mfb]

You cannot violate conservation of energy. Harnessing kinetic energy doesn't work because you need the motor to gain that kinetic energy.
Wind and solar: Possible in principle. In practice the power is way too low to power a regular car that way. You don't want your car to charge for a week just to make a short trip possible.

 

[CharlohAwk]

Not enough to be perpetually self charging unless you only drive it a few miles a week. For continuous driving you can't come close without major sacrifices.

What sacrifices??

 

[mfb]

A typical electric car will need something like 200 Wh/km at typical speed mixtures. If you cover 2 m² with solar panels, and you live in a sunny area, you might get 2000 Wh per day, or 10 km of driving distance per day - but only if the sun shines.
Want to drive somewhere because it rains? Better hope you had good weather and didn't use your car the days before.
Want to drive for more than 100 km at a time? Then you have to charge for weeks and you'll need large, expensive and heavy batteries.

Wind would be even worse.

 

[russ_watters]

What sacrifices??

The car will need to look like the photo below and have no air conditioning, no passenger room, no cargo space and you have to lay down to drive it. It will go 60mph, but it'll take a minute or two to accelerate to it. That's for continuous driving. Either that or like mfb says, you can have a normal car that you can only drive an average of a couple of miles a day.

 

[OCR]

I think I see some foolishness in that photo, Russ. ?

Shouldn't the guy taking pictures have a PV system on his hat to recharge his camera battery ?

... and I'll bet Volkswagen is trying to cheat, too ?

... you have to can lay down to drive it.

Wait!... on second thought...

 

[mheslep]

It will go 60mph

The world record for a vehicled powered only from PV (no batteries) is not quite there yet, 55 mph. No doubt the course was dead level with no headwind and the time close to solar zenith.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_car_racing#Guinness_world_record
Add batteries and and the top speed is indefinitely higher, forcing the solar car competitions to use long distances to avoid nonsensical outcomes.