Chinese Company Unveils Solar-Powered Car for $5,560
The Zhejiang 001 Group has produced a tiny car powered entirely by the solar panels on its roof.
The panels can charge the battery enough for a 3-mile trip in just one hour. After a full charge of 30 hours in the sun, the car can travel up to 90 miles.
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The vehicle was debuted at the 29th Zhejiang International Bicycles and Electric-powered Cars Exhibition last week. The panels are not integrated into the car’s design, but rather stand above the car much like a typical roof-rack attachment.
According to the company, the panels can absorb up to 95 percent of solar energy, but can only transform 14 to 17 percent to electricity.
Roof panels aside, the car is nearly identical to China’s popular economy vehicle, the Cherry QQ, which is pictured above. Only ten of the solar cars have been manufactured so far, but more production is planned. Unfortunately, you won’t have much luck finding one outside of China.
Photo Credit: Anuradha on Flickr under Creative Commons license.
This car is terrible. 30 hours of sunlight for 90 miles. One hour gets you 3 miles.
They wouldn’t market this in the U.S. because it is retarded, the safety concerns notwithstanding.
My guess would be they are lieing. A few square feet of solar panels produce barely enough light to light a small florescent light bulb. There is no way to magically push a car down the road with that little energy. And that amount of money would not buy a battery for a Honda Hybrid. Please remember this is the same country painting your kids toys with lead, and hurting their own children with tainted milk.
This car could work for local commuting and shopping. I do not think I would want to take a 400 mile day trip in one.
U.S. safety laws could be modified. For example, for safety, England has a law that requires all vehicle bumpers to be the same height from road.
We can handle this energy dependence problem if we make it a priority and walk our talk. Stop buying the 2+ton vehicles for daily commuting. G.M. and Ford build small vehicles for foreign sales. Sell them here. 60% of G.M. sales are made off-shore and we just gave them $25 Billion to continue to do business here.
Changing the rules / laws in addition to throwing money at our energy dependence problem may help.
Any proof?
it’s actually a pretty good idea…30 hrs for 90 miles isn’t too bad. If you think about it, you may be able to combine this with a plug in charger to make it pretty useful.
Also, if you think about it you’re not going to run it dry every time, so you won’t really need 30 hours to charge it up every time, chances are the battery will be half full when you charge it and it would require less time. If you could secure the cells to the roof it might allow you some extra distance but I think the cells should be incorporated into the roof (I assume it hasn’t to save costs).
I want them to make it faster:-)
“A few square feet of solar panels produce barely enough light to light a small florescent light bulb. ”
Well, a modern mass-production solar panel (see ebay)
puts out about 8 W per sq. ft. Since they say the panels aren’t built into the roof, I’m assuming they have at least 20 sq. ft.
of solar panels (e.g. two 2′ x 5′ panels). That would be about
160 W (which would be enough to light about 10 compact flourescent bulbs). If they have three 2′ x 5′ panels (i.e. a 5′ x 6′ array) it would be 240 W.
sucks if you park in a garage…
Looks like a real winner. In the thirty hours it takes to charge the vehicle, you could walk the same distance and still have time left over to reflect on what a sap you were to buy it.
Or you could just stay by the vehicle, while it charges full, and contract a decent case of skin cancer.
In normal, stop-and-go traffic, the distance the vehicle could take you is less than ninety miles, is it not?
And if you get caught in heavy traffic, you may well find yourself obliged to push your discharged vehicle to the side of the road, where you can stand stranded, only a few miles from home.
God bless fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine: proven sustainable — into any foreseeable future — economical, convenient, and reliable.