CharlohAwk
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Would it be possible to engineer a self-charging vehicle... Harnessing kinetic, solar, and wind energy?
Can Self-Charging Electric Vehicles Reach 60mph Using Renewable Energies?
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Mentor
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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.CharlohAwk said:
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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.
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
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russ_watters said:
What sacrifices??
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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.
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.
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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.CharlohAwk said:
OCR
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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 ?
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 ?
Wait!... on second thought...russ_watters said:
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mheslep
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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.russ_watters said:
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.