Is Solar Power The New Oil?

Please rate, comment and subscribe!

Many manufacturers are going into production or creating concepts with integrated solar panels in the roof or body of the car.

Although under normal use this will not provide all the vehicles power it will make a significant contribution when you factor in the decreasing cost of solar panels and the rising cost of fossil fuel.

Here are some examples:

Solar Toyota Prius:

http://www.solarelectricalvehicles.com/

Fisker Karma:

http://www.fiskerautomotive.com/

Saab 9 X concept:

http://www.saab.com/main/GLOBAL/en/9X_biohybrid/index.shtml


BMW concept with solar roof:

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/02/22/geneva-08-officially-official-the-bmw...

Ford Reflex concept:

http://www.automobilemag.com/auto_shows/naias_2006/0601_ford_reflex_concept/i...

Giugiaro Quantara concept:

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/03/05/geneva-2008-italdesign-giugiaro-quantara-o...

and many more...

The Fisker Karma can already be ordered from the Fisker website - the first ones are scheduled for delivery in 2009.

The music theme is called 'sunshine'.

The wattage of the average car roof panel is around 250 watts. If you covered the entire car in solar film or panels you would get around 1000 watts or more.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• solar
• power
• vehicles
• renewable
• energy
• electric
• hybrid
• peak
• oil
• hydrogen
• car
• plane
• boat
• fisker
• karma
• BMW
• alternative

[ingaman]

@ignacio54321 Why not have solar panels charge a large battery? When I go to work I leave my car outside in the sunlight anyway. It would be nice to come back to my car to "full tank" lol. And there's no way in hell they'd let me plug my car in either lol.

[AtibbsSPARTAN]

Electric vehicles only make sense if you are getting your electricity from a smart source.

[ignacio54321]

A solar power car it's a really bad idea... If you are going to use batteries on a car, make sure they are as big as possible, and use solar powered electric plants to power this cars. This way you can make an affordable solar powered electric car for daily use with the present tech.

[fireofenergy]

The cars themselves, no matter how light, consume more power than their surface area could ever provide by solar power alone... unless they sit in the sun, charging for like 20 times longer than it is used. A better choice is to use GaAs (30%) eff solar cells in concentrating arrays, stored in batteries... ALL MACHINE MADE... and build more powerlines (and extra grid components for nasty solar storm events). Then there could be 500,000 sq miles of install jobs...

[oscarfish48]

@tyldesley2010 boat :D

[tyldesley2010]

I live in Manchester England , rains all the time!!!!!!!!!!! What will i drive to work in?

[Salien1999]

Santa Clause certainly won't use it

[PerigeePower]

YES! :)

[Hashpotato]

yea its not gonna work in ireland...

[DwayneLeroice]

I really like this design. Best of any solar car I've seen.