Non fossil fuel propulsion

Your own link is perfectly fine by me.

6.5 kW is about 22 m^2. That's nothing, I could fit far more than that.

I also get plenty of sun, and I don't drive anywhere near 72 miles per day. No problems.

Your doom and gloom assesment is very innaccurate.

 

Unshaded roof facing the right direction? Sounds like you have the perfect application. What are you waiting for?

A pitched roof is at best half usable. Solar power varies by location and season. The original statement was to be off the grid, charge at night from solar charged batteries. The losses and mismatch between demand and supply are important details being overlooked. For $50K to 100K investment I would expect to NEVER be stuck at home or at the side of the road.

"doom and gloom"? I just corrected your assertion by a factor of ten and you are calling me inaccurate? You can't even spell assessment or inaccurate!

 

Be nice children.
The only thing of value here is facts we can trust.

A poke in the eye doesn't get us to a reasonable conclusion.

I don't spll so well either.

 

A couple of decades of spell checkers have made me lazy. Anyway, I'm an engineer, not a literary type to worry too much about spelling on a forum.

You've done no correcting whatsoever. Your example was for a different car, different distance, and different assumption about weather. An entirety new situation, not a correction.

You don't have enough space in your house to fit a couple of 4*5m rooms? I'll bet most do, plus a hell of a lot more.

Your pricing is absurd. Panels sell almost as low as 50c per W.

 

To give an idea of the type of prices that are realistic, New Zealand energy supplier Vector sells a 3kW panel plus 10kWh battery package installed in homes for NZ$12,500.

Worlds away from the crazy numbers typed here in the last couple of posts.

 

The smallest vehicle I have any use for is a Toyota Tacoma. Mine has a range of 24 miles per gallon when not pulling a trailer. It still gets 21 miles per gallon when I pull my camping trailer. Prius is worthless to me. I only want non-ethanol fossil based gasoline to run my boat.
Socialist taxes drive up the cost of fuel.

 

Up,

the way I see it you put out a 'shoot from the hip' estimate to stir up debate and get people searching for the truth. I took the bait and offered my own admittedly rough estimate of what it would really take and most of my info is a year old.

I was wrong about panel price but I said I was out of date.

Rasta,
you said "20 miles per day somewhere with 5 hours of sunlight per day requires just 0.64 kW of panels". But that is just not true unless there is a place where the sun stands still for 5 hours a day at the perfect position for the panel. And even if it were true it still fails to match the utility of a real gas car that goes as far as you want, whenever you want, and NEVER leaves you stranded. There is a reason that there are no electric cars with a range less than 80 miles -nobody would buy them due to range anxiety. A person with 20 miles of range is a person who is looking for their next charge, not going about their business. Their expensive electric car is a burden. They envy the bike rider for their care free life. Honestly, if you truly only need to go 20 miles on days when the sun shines the bike is vastly superior in every way.

The real case of the guy with 6.5 Kw array and a Tesla speedster is very close to the best case. He is able to get a charge level in one day that covers 90+ percent of use expectations. The Tesla is MORE efficient than the leaf. San Diego has far better than average solar flux, his array looks bigger than 22 M^2 (1 acre in SD would cost >$2M, that's a big house). The reality is that in real operation it takes a 6.5 Kw array to charge an electric car with no lifestyle sacrifice. You are off by 10X.

I am not the kind of guy that picks on spelling mistakes but you called me names and it was so ironic that you made two spelling errors in the sentence calling me inaccurate, including the word INACCURATE! How could I resist?
Your excuse is that you are an engineer? It doesn't show (other than the poor spelling). In the future I will have higher technical expectations -please try to live up to them.

It sounds like you have an excellent (almost perfect) application for solar and an electric car. Why don't you buy them? Based on my realistic case the payback is good. Based on your estimates you are crazy to NOT buy them. How can you believe what you claim and not act on it?

My panel info is based on a presentation at last years 'Green Earth Fair' at the institute up the street. This years fair is Sunday. Maybe I will get an update. I have 22 M^2 of unshaded roof at the right angle. If I can get 6.5KW from 5 hrs of sun/day for $0.5/W I will do it. That would be a 26% rate of return!

 

That is worlds away, literally. Please provide links. I have no argument with you about price of panels (I want them to be low). My argument was about the relationship between panel rate numbers and how much useful energy is produced/day and needed for an electric car to replace a gas one with no loss of function.

 

Glad to hear it.

Why on earth are you assuming the car has ONLY 20 miles of charge in it? It doesn't - that simply all that's needed to replace what's used each day in that scenario.

*I* am not off by anything, I've given not a single figure of my own. That article may be (not by a factor of 10 though - it was talking only about travelling 20 miles) but that's of no concern to me, I found it purely to point out how very wrong your claim that a typical house couldn't fit enough panels was.
I'm more than happy to use the figures from your link.

Please point out one name I've called you.

Because of my current financial situation. I'm not going to discuss it with you.
My next car will be electric, but I'll have to wait a few years.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/culture-shock-network-offers-solar-storage-leases-to-customers-91569
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/future-grid-networks-focus-on-solar-storage-for-consumers-66152
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/07/australias-plunging-cost-solar-energy-graphs/
http://vector.co.nz/solar
http://www.energetics.com.au/insigh...lectricity-storage-battery-solar-pv-renewable
http://solarbusiness.com.au/re-inventing-electricity-industry-storage/
http://www.energystoragenews.org/topic/profile/kokam/
http://uat.vector.co.nz/node/6079

A bunch of links that mention it when I google "vector energy panel and storage package"

Your own searching has found sources for this that you apparently trust.

I hope you've now reached the conclusion that this statement of yours was wrong (in more than one way): "I don't know the current state of the art but the average home can only fit about $50k of solar cells and that would not be enough to do all the charging an electric auto would need."

And that as a result this statement of yours is also not correct and requires revision: "The bottom line is compared to an efficient equivalent gas car the electric and solar will cost you more than twice as much with the government paying about a third to boot."