The Solar Car

Most people cringe every time they go to a service station to fill up their car with petrol. And it’s not getting any cheaper.

In recent years there has been a lot of research and development in the area of a solar powered car. The drawbacks are there, but so are the solutions. There was having enough storage capacity to provide enough power to achieve the performance required. But that came with weight issues and of course the two were competing with each other. The more weight, the more power you need to propel the weight.

However, the concept of the electric car is fast becoming the preferred option to other forms of propulsion. It may be a case that for a while yet we have a hybrid concept where petrol, or gas, is used in conjunction with electricity. The other issue with a fully electric car is you have to be able to recharge the battery cells. That has perhaps been the greatest stumbling block.

The concept of a car that runs entirely on solar power is slowly becoming the way of the future. Most cars provide a considerable square area, but not all of it is necessarily exposed to enough sun, all the time. However with advances in technology with regard to materials that will produce enough energy from a fixed area of capture, the concept of a solar powered car is looking more and more like it is going to be achievable, certainly in regions and counties, such as Australia, where there is pretty much a constant supply of heat from the sun.

There are of course knew ideas being developed around the shape and design, Storage or battery technology has improved greatly over the past decade, to the point where batteries have become lighter, more efficient and require less square area in proportion to the area of the car itself. There are many types of battery like Tesla Powerwall Battery, LG chem battery etc. but these batteries are not for cars.

Much of the driving force behind the development of an efficient fully electric car is the cost of fuel and the environmental impacts petrol engines are having. With more and more cars coming into use each year, and our growing dependency on motor vehicle transport, the motivation is there to progress in all the right directions.

Manufactures of motor vehicles are also a driving force. As people become more cost and environmentally aware, there is an increasing market trend toward clean energy, low or zero emission forms of transport. So I guess if you take all factors into account, given how much we depend upon, and like our motor vehicles, it may not be too long before you are driving an all-electric car. It may cost a little more to begin with, but the savings will offset that.

Continue reading