>>28214500
Some do, but mostly there's just not a lot of space for solar panels on a car. If you have a glass roof, you can't put solar panels on the roof or you'll block the view. You can't put it on the pillars since they're too small, and the doors don't really get direct sunlight. Really, you're looking at the hood and trunk, and that's not much surface area. If you want solar panels to charge the car, you're going to need to set them up at your destination.

>>28214500
Learn how electricity works. A roof of a car packed with solar panels would only power the faggy RGB lights inside under ideal conditions. Those solar UFO cars only pull it off because they weigh 200lbs and have a stupid low drag coefficient.

>>28214500
They make solar panel battery minder thingies. I have never known anyone that used one. I suspect they suck. I sort of want one.

>>28215182
If I had an EV, I'd want an onboard power adapter for low voltage DC current so I could just carry a bunch of portable solar panels with me, connect them in probably parallel, and let car use the generated power to charge the batteries. It would make things like off grid camping make sense. You could buy a bunch of portable panels (say, 3-5 kW worth), set them up at your destination (it doesn't really matter that they take up a bunch of space, you're in the middle of nowhere, space is not a premium), connect them up to the car, and use the car's battery to power small house loads like a fridge/freezer cooler, and you're still adding range back to the vehicle while you're there. I don't understand why they don't already have this, it's not like it should be expensive to take DC current to charge the batteries, you're already saving the car the hassle of converting from AC to DC.

>>28215194
3-5 KW of panels is 30-50 100W panels or 10+ 300-400W roof panels. Have fun with that.

Might be ok to have a roof panel on a camper van for amenities. I'm sure there are people who do that but I'm not positive how sane it is.

>>28215232
Portable panels often come in groups folded up pre-wired to connect to other panels if you want to, you can just set up about 5-10 when you get there in 5 minutes max. They don't take up much space folded up, so carrying them in the trunk is pretty trivial.

I live in the UK. Our skies are 500 different shades of impenetrable grey gloom all year. Once again Californimorons deem themselves the centre of the universe and think the rest of the World is just as they know.

>>28215242
>portable panels
so a 20w panel that you would need 100+

>>28215246
Not everybody lives in your shitty miserable overpopulated island, some of us live in a normal country.

>>28214500
it ain't enough

File: Screenshot_20250117_13055(...).jpg (166 KB, 1080x944)

166 KB JPG

>>28215258
This is a 400w portable panel, anon. Buy 10 of them, you've got 4 kW.

>>28214500
solar panels on a car are fucking garbage, basically.

>>28215262
Typical californicunt lack of awareness.

>>28215267
I don't even live in California. There are many, many more places in America than California. Your tiny little island is completely irrelevant, your market is tiny and you people cannot afford rent, let alone a car.

>>28214500
>he parks his car outside
nice of you to tell us you're poor. Joke aside, if anything buildings should be plastered with solar panels that powers ev chargers in the garages.

File: file.jpg (24 KB, 704x396)

24 KB JPG

>>28214500
Audi actually did that a decade ago, but the solar panels were only in the sun roof. They were supposed to generate enough power that you could run your A/C and radio with the car off without draining your battery.
In practice no one really uses their cars like that and people would rather have a working sun roof instead. It also wasn't very reliable and barely made any power so it would often drain your battery anyways. You would think they could use a system like that to recharge your battery in case it died, but for some reason that wasn't the case. So if you killed your battery thinking the solar panels were generating enough power you had to get a jump anyways. So Audi quietly killed this feature and even though solar panels have become a lot more efficient today, Audi hasn't brought that concept back.

File: pulsar-inverter-generator(...).jpg (26 KB, 600x600)

26 KB JPG

>>28215265
Those are also 30lbs a peice and are almost $600. Are you really going to carry around 300lbs and $6k worth of solar panels (that require a shitload of setup and breakdown and are weather dependent) to barely put out as much power as a little $400 generator? If yes, then you are retarded.

>>28215323
>A/C ... with the car off
Did it have an electric compressor motor?

File: 1719579741353.jpg (33 KB, 400x400)

33 KB JPG

>>28214500
Believe it or not, solar panels do break. Would you want a $1400 bill to fix your 2a trickle charger that only works when you leave your car in the sun? You do garage keep your car, don't you?

>>28214500
You know how laptops are more expensive relative to the performance you get out of them? Even if you include the cost of an equivalent monitor. That's because portability significantly increases costs.

Also there's no point since the battery serves the same purpose.

>>28215329
>Carry around
In the car, I don't have to carry them around myself, it doesn't matter that they weigh 30 lbs because I only need to actually pick them up for setup and takedown, and 30 lbs really isn't that heavy.
>Shitload of setup
Oh no, it's so hard to plug wires into other wires and then into a charge controller!
>weather dependent
I have a whole car as a battery backup, and I'm probably not using a kWh per day on a fridge, and even then solar panels still generate about 20-25% of their rated power when it's completely overcast
>Barely as much power as a cheap generator
With no fuel and no noise and no maintenance and which will run when I'm not there
It doesn't matter that the generator is cheaper up front, or even if it would be cheaper over the lifetime of the panels, I don't go out into the middle of nowhere to listen to the drone of a generator while sitting in camp.

>>28215333
yeah
I never owned one, but I think it worked similarly to the one in the Toyota Prius as you can also drive the Prius on battery power only with the engine off and the A/C on.

>>28215369
Even most "vanlyfers" and RV'ers don't bother with a solar setup. You just get fuck-all for power even in ideal conditions that you're rarely going to get. An hour of driving and charging your batteries with an alternator is equivalent to 10+ hours of solar charging.

File: IMG_1944.jpg (81 KB, 1200x1200)

81 KB JPG

>>28215641
I wonder how long it would take to charge an r/c car with pic rel

>>28215641
>Alternator
But we're talking about EVs?
>Van lifers
Don't care, I have a house with a garage. This is for going out innawoods for a few days before coming back home, if I happened to have an EV and want to do such a thing (I like going innawoods with buddies, I don't have an EV though). The vehicles already have all the components there, in theory it should be simple to convert DC current at a given voltage to whatever voltage the batteries need for charging without having to convert to AC first, and therefore it should be more efficient. It would also mean I don't have to lug around a portable battery, since the car itself is the battery. Any extra range added is just less to worry about when it comes time to leave.

File: file.png (505 KB, 625x351)

505 KB PNG

>>28215641
my boy Ken does

>>28215668
That panel might do a single watt under good conditions. A 3s 4AH pack is around 44WH. So it would take 44 hours of straight sunlight to charge the RC car pack. Use that to scale up just how many panels you would need to charge or even top up a 1:1 RC car.

>>28215678
>But we're talking about EVs?
Yes we are but I was using a comparison you would hopefully understand. Guess that didn't work.

Where are you going where you can leave 20 solar panels set up as you hike? You really think those wouldn't get fucked by 2 and 4 legged animals?

>>28215692
I forgot to say "no calculations", because I can easily guess how depressing it would be. I have an RC car around here somewhere but I don't remember what it uses for a battery pack

>>28215692
Wild animals are pretty unlikely to fuck with your stuff if it isn't edible. I've watched moose, the dumbest animals I can think of, gingerly walk around parked cars and chairs and around hammocks suspended between trees before continuing on their way. Animals generally would really rather not interact with something they don't understand if they can easily avoid it.

File: porcu.jpg (45 KB, 528x704)

45 KB JPG

>>28215751
>Wild animals are pretty unlikely to fuck with your stuff if it isn't edible
You sure about that?

>>28215759
I've never seen anything like that, and it looks like it's limited to British Columbia, and has something to do with them loving the salt from the road.

>>28215808
Because you don't /out/. I get a feeling you have to worry about the 2 legged animals where you live.

>>28214518
>Learn how electricity works.
How about you teach him how it works. How much would 2 panels like that provide under sunny conditions? If you parked it for 8 hours in a sunny parking lot, could they charge up a hybrid battery system sufficiently to get you 20 miles home?

>>28215818
>How about you teach him how it works.
He can whip out his 3rd grade science homework and learn himself.

>How much would 2 panels like that provide under sunny conditions?
Less than 100w.

>could they charge up a hybrid battery system sufficiently to get you 20 miles home?
Nope. Just the assorted electrical bullshit in the vehicle will use up all that 100w. A 120v outlet is hopeless for EV charging and that's over 1400w.

>>28215840
>No, I don't know how much electricity those panels can produce.
>No, I won't correct myself
>It just doesn't make any power, okay?
Okay.

File: file.png (3.24 MB, 1565x1819)

3.24 MB PNG

>>28215840
100 watts is pretty good. If you get that over 6 hours (5 of peak daylight + the rest of the day), that's 600 watt-hours.

A Tesla model 3 uses about 183 wh per mile, so you'd get about 3.3 miles. I drive about 10 miles per day, so that would be perfect for me.

Plus if I got stuck somewhere, I could use it as a surplus boost.

>>28215862
Do you believe everything the manufacturer tells you? There's a reason why nobody bothers doing that.

>>28215872
Go measure your 12v battery standby drain then redo those calculations.

>>28215895
>Do you believe everything the manufacturer tells you?
I know some of it is rounding errors, conditions, and marketing wank. But if a manufacturer makes a claim and its a blatant lie lawsuits start or the product just doesn't sell.

So, generally I trust but verify manufacturer claims. If they claim it does 100 watts or 4000 watts, theres a fairly simply way of verifying that stuff.

>>28215895
irrelevant because the battery will drain anyway

>>28215901
>if a manufacturer makes a claim and its a blatant lie lawsuits start or the product just doesn't sell.
Very few manufacturers offer it as an option and when it is offered nobody buys it. That kind of tells you it's a useless feature. Yes it is simple to verify that stuff. Do the math on how useless a solar panel is then compare it to the surface area of the panels on a vehicle.

>>28215902
Sure and the solar panels MIGHT prevent SOME of that. You will still never ever get any relevant range from the panels on the roof of a vehicle even if you get rid of the several amps of standby current draw a modern EV has.

>>28215910
the point is the car has standby current draw regardless. so any extra power is just that, extra. so that 600WH would still be applicable to 3-4 miles of range.

File: APTERA2019_ASPHALT-DOORS-(...).jpg (2.22 MB, 1962x1518)

2.22 MB JPG

>>28214500
NEVER
...V
...E
...R

>>28215910
>Very few manufacturers offer it as an option and when it is offered nobody buys it.
Gee, that must mean it doesn't provide much power, it cannot simply be because its a $6000 option to save 3 cents of electricity per drive.

You made the claim it wouldn't provide any meaningful charge without substantiating the claim then pivoted to manufacturers just not selling it. Wait'll you find out the math for panels on a fucking house.

>>28215262
Any part of the US that isn't desert has clouds.

File: audi_d2_a8_solar_sunroof_assy.jpg (97 KB, 640x480)

97 KB JPG

>>28215333
Didn't run the A/C as I recall. It ran a small fan in the sunroof assembly. When interior temperatures got high enough the car popped the sunroof in the Vent position automatically and if the temps continued rising it turned on that small fan to help exhaust the heat. Apparently the area of the solar panel wasn't enough to feed the fan entirely and it would tap the main battery to run the fan. Acceptable in temperate areas but down south the fan would run all day because it's hot as fuck even in the early morning and run the battery down. The whole solar panel thing was just a gimmick to catch greenfags with more money than brains since it could never have supplied enough power to run even the fan let alone anything else which was obvious to anybody with two braincells firing as the panel was far too small.

>>28215912
That's 100w for a couple hours if that so you're not getting 600wh. You're getting the equivalent of running a small generator for 2 minutes if that.

>>28215921
I really don't get why you people struggle with just how much solar panels suck at generating electricity. Have you seen how many panels it takes to run a little satellite? And those are aerospace grade panels. You think a car manufacturer is using quality panels like that?

I bet you got a solar setup on your house. Cut your grid supply and see how well those panels charge your EV let alone run your house.

>>28214500
I am fully qualified to give you a proper reply on that and Im not even kidding.
the contribution is terribly much lower than most people want to admit

>>28215814
Sure I do, I just don't live on the West Coast anymore. Even when I did, porcupines weren't a concern, so it was still a non-issue. Bitterant in the cable coatings would still prevent animals from being too interested in eating them, and the panels themselves aren't edible.

>>28215958
Porcupines aren't the only things that will fuck you over. Marmots, rats, mice, etc will all chew your shit up. Like I said it's the humans you probably got to worry about. Gaurantee you if you set up 20 panels around your car at the trailhead, go for a hike and come back you're going to find them smashed or not there anymore. "people" are like that these days.

>>28215972
There's no point in setting up panels unless you're going to be setting up camp, and if you're setting up camp and you can't trust people around you not to steal your shit, you shouldn't be there, and you shouldn't leave anything unattended. If you're not camping and spending at least a full day and night there, you're not getting enough daylight for the solar panels to generate anything worthwhile anyway, and you don't really need power for anything, either.

>>28215931
You've never heard of houses "selling" power back to the grid because their house uses less than what the panels are putting out?

>>28215999
You are selling power on average, but when you charge an EV on a 10 kW charger, and you're still trying to power the rest of your house, unless you have 15 kW of panels (you do not) then you are consuming power from the grid. Even if you did, your house batteries are definitely not big enough to charge your car, even if you only need to replenish 20 kWh, unless you spend about $30,000 on house batteries.

>>28215999
How much power are you selling back at night? You're buying a $20k+ solar setup to generate little to no electricity for the power company during the day just so you can still buy power from them at night. You solar people are a special breed.

>>28216008
How much power are you using at night? good god now you've strayed away from the original topic because you just gotta hate solar panels for some reason.

>>28216014
>How much power are you using at night?
A fucking lot if you're charging a fucking EV... I fucking hate solar panels because the people who shill them make my fucking brain hurt.

>>28215931
Don't discourage him. Maybe he will come back with pictures of his setup.

FFS solar power and EVs are one of the places where the normie logic of "if it was real, everyone else would be doing it" is totally true. Until it gets forced on us by retarded regulation and these retards will pretend it was foreordained

>>28216032
>>28216008
They make sense for precisely 2 purposes: charging up a battery for light loads off grid, and reducing the amount of natural gas you have to burn during the day. Unless you have a battery at home, they're not useful to people who work, and if you do have a battery at home, you spent a shitload of money that you really didn't need to for almost no personal benefit at all. If you don't work for a living, you don't need to charge your car, either, and if you do, it's because you actually leave your house and still aren't getting any benefit out of your solar panels.

Of course, you could not do solar at all and just capture the natural gas being flared off in North Dakota and burn that in a combined cycle refinery and all of energy made by solar panels in the US would be more than made up for, but I never claimed our government was intelligent.

>>28215927
Wow that's retarded. How is that a failure mode they didn't anticipate? Keeping the fan from running the battery down is literally as simple as a timer switch.

>>28214500
only poors leave their car in the sun plus imagine having your car be fucking ugly on the lid just to maintain your battery, just buy another one when it dies