
Audi electric cars will come with solar roofs - yawz
http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2017/08/25/audi-electric-cars-will-come-with-solar-roofs.html
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blorsh
Regular cars need this.

Leave a car for months, and you'll get back to a dead battery. Keyless entry
won't work. You can't roll down the windows. Settings may be forgotten. There
is no way to start the engine.

Leave a car out in the Sun in a place like Arizona, and stuff melts. If you
get in the car, the seatbelts cause burns that blister. Having the car run a
fan would be nice, and the more you need it the more power there is available
to do so.

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mikestew
Probably about as "feel good" as the panel on the spoiler of our Nissan Leaf:
looks cool, doesn't do much. Keep in mind that a Leaf does about four miles
per 1000Wh. That Audi can't have more than 200W worth of panels.

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cjlars
Also, garages.

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randomstring
Negligible performance improvement at great added cost and increased weight.
It's a sales gimmick.

They might be better off installing a lighter roof and reduce overall weight
to increase range.

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sithadmin
Yep. The Fisker Karma had this feature too.

The cynic in me wonders how much government subsidies for alternative energy
vehicles prop up expensive, nearly pointless features like this.

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JulianMorrison
Park it in the sun, leave the air con on.

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mikestew
I've done the math: even if I covered the top of our VW Westfalia camper van
with solar panels (400-500W max), the panels couldn't begin to generate enough
power to run even the most efficient A/C unit.

Better to just park in the shade with the windows cracked.

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kevin_b_er
The A/C units are rated in tens of thousands of BTU per hour for a car. 10k
BTU/hr is 2.9 kilowatts.

Fans might work, but not the A/C.

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mikestew
Though there's telemetry for it, I've never paid attention to how much our
Nissan Leaf's A/C pulls. What I do know is that it doesn't kill the range
nearly as much as the heater, so let's say it pulls half what the heater does.
Heater pulls, give or take, 3000W ( _that_ telemetry, I've paid attention to).
Figure out how to squeeze 15 100W panels on the roof and you're golden.

