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The anxiety for autonomy It is still one of the great inconvenience when convincing the skeptics of the electric car. For years, manufacturers juggle the kilometers that can be traveled with a single battery charge. There are even debates on how interesting it is more interesting to increase the size of the batteries or improve recharge times.
Among those juggling has been tested with solar panels as a solution to problems. An option that until now does not seem to have given the expected results but that some German researchers point out as an interesting solution to win up to 30% autonomy.
What is behind this study?
A solar van that promises 30% more autonomy
The use of solar energy for the battery recharge of a car and the increase in its autonomy has been studying for a long time. In fact, in 2022 the Lightyear 0an electric car with solar panels that promised to extend autonomy in 70 kilometers every day.
Just over a year later, the company itself announced that closed its vehicle division And that, from now on, he would stay with the only thing that seemed to have a future: his solar panels. Its history is the best example of how everything that has to do with the application of solar panels seems to work in cars. Promises of increases of dozens of kilometers of autonomyinterest is generated, it is proven that the system is not so much and ends up falling into oblivion.
In an electric car, the space to incorporate solar panels is very small. It can be done on the roof, on the hood and in the trunk. However, the surface is relatively small, the curved shapes of the pieces make the solar sheets that can be incorporated and, as if that were not enough, the results are little encouraging.
In fact, the Mercedes Vision EQXXthat the German company uses for its leading tests with the electric car, barely recovered 43 kilometers on a trip that lasted more than 1,200 kilometers thanks to its solar panels. The company, however, is sure that the system can be interesting and The last thing he has tried is a solar paint with which they ensure that they can suppose up to 12,000 additional kilometers per year in a medium SUV and in the light conditions of Germany.
Mercedes points out that the efficiency of the system is 20% but has not confirmed what price we are talking or when they expect to be commercially available. At the moment, everything is still part of more research.
Which, on the contrary, affirms the study by the Gauss Center for Supercomputing EV and the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, published in Wiley It is that a light commercial vehicle can take performance to this technology.
They base their studies on a project that began in 2021. Then, they filled the body of a small van and analyzed the energy recovered between the months of April and July of that year in Hannover. According to its results, the van I could have traveled 530 km from the 1750 km circulated. That is, 30% of the total distance.
However, you have to take several things into account. The van left every morning early (5:00 am) to Institute for Solar Energy Research in Hamelin (ISFH). There, the car was detained for hours until the working day was over and the driver returned home touring, again, the approximate 45 minutes it took to his work.
They ensure that with this system the van was able to take advantage of more than 60% of the recovered energy and that, in total, extended its autonomy by 30%. However, in the study it is clear that they are estimates in which the energy recovered by the regenerative braking has been discriminated against, for example. They also point out that the tests were performed in the spring and summer months, where the incidence of sunlight is much greater.
But, above all, there is a great but: we are talking about a commercial vehicle that spent hours and hours detained and, in addition, strategically positioning to obtain the greatest possible radiation over time. In this way, they reduced shade areas and less efficient areas.
Of course, this is not the way of working that is expected of a commercial vehicle that makes much more moved days and that travels much more than 31.25 kilometers recorded in each session. In motionit is expected that the energy collected by the solar panels will be much lower because the shadow periods on the vehicle and the plates are less exposed in their best position. In addition, if the commercial vehicle moves in an urban environment, it is very likely that the shadow areas will increase.
Nor is the cost that this system can have. It is possible that in a commercial vehicle it may make more sense than in a tourism but we would have to study the added weight, the increase in temperature inside the cabin and, subsequently, how long the car would need by plugging it into a fast charger (and its cost) to estimate whether or not it really makes sense.
Photo | Wiley
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