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Toyota is Trying to Figure Out How to Make a Car Run Forever:
Put together the best solar panels money can buy, super-efficient batteries and decades of car-making know-how and, theoretically, a vehicle might run forever.
That's the audacious motivation behind a project by Toyota Motor Corp., Sharp Corp. and New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization of Japan, or NEDO, to test a Prius that could revolutionize transportation.
"The solar car's advantage is that — while it can't drive for a long range — it's really independent of charging facilities," said Koji Makino, a project manager at Toyota.
[...] But the current forecast is only partly sunny because there's still some work left to reach that level of efficiency.
"This is not a technology we are going to see widely used in the next decades," said Takeshi Miyao, an auto analyst at consultancy Carnorama. "It's going to take a long time."
[...] Toyota has been testing a new solar-powered Prius since July, though it acknowledges that cars running nonstop without connecting to a hose or plug are still far away. Even so, the Toyota City-based company said the research will pay off in other ways.
Indeed, there have been some breakthroughs, mainly due to advancements by Sharp. The prototype's solar panel converts sunlight at an efficiency level of more than 34%, compared with about 20% for current panels on the market.
[...] If the car is driven four days a week for a maximum of 50 kilometers a day, there's no need to plug into an outlet, NEDO's Yamazaki said.
Or only drive it on weekends.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday September 13 2019, @07:09PM (2 children)
They already acknowledge the limitations in that it's as forever as, say, the Mars rovers which require good sunlight, no obscuration of the panels, run days and time based on how much charge was gotten. And to be able to supplement from the mains, even better. Yet nothing lasts forever, as sooner or later those batteries the solar is charging will no longer take a charge.
It's time for me to stretch around a little and see what the current lifetime on electric vehicle batteries are. More economical fill-ups are one thing, but in a gasoline burner one usually doesn't have to replace the gas tank, fuel lines, and exhaust system every 2-3 years either. (OK technically one doesn't necessarily replace the electrical wires in an EV either... but the batts are expensive enough).
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Informative) by KilroySmith on Friday September 13 2019, @08:12PM (1 child)
It's kinda hard to get information on EV battery lifetimes, but crowd-sourced data indicates that it's as long or longer than a gas engine:
https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-data/ [electrek.co]
EV battery packs don't die due to longevity in the sense of "It worked yesterday, but it's dead as a doornail today". That can happen in the case of a mechanical failure (broken wire or connector, magic smoke leaves the electronics, etc), but doesn't happen just because the car rolled up 200,000 miles. Instead, the capacity of the cells (as measured by the distance the car can drive) gradually diminishes until it's so short that people get annoyed. As an industry standard, that threshold seems to be about 80% - when the pack only has 80% of the original capacity, it's considered worn-out. The current Tesla warranty, on the other hand, only guarantees 70% capacity at 100,000 miles. The Tesla Model S data linked above shows an interesting curve to it - there's an initial rapid degradation to about 95% over the first 50,000 miles, then it levels out. There really isn't enough publicly available information yet to extrapolate to 80% lifetime, but some comments by Elon Musk and others have suggested that might occur around 250,000 to 300,000 miles nominally.
Frankly, when my Tesla Model 3 gets to 250,000 miles and only has 250 miles of range (still more than any current EV except the Hyundai Kona https://evrater.com/evs [evrater.com] ), I expect it'll still have an excellent resale value because it'll still be an excellent vehicle with excellent range.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday September 16 2019, @02:51PM
That is really interesting and informative, thank you!
I wonder when one gets to that point how replaceable the batteries are / equivalent to an engine change if one feels the need and if so how affordable that would be. (I've done that with one care I owned). Not saying one could do this, but if one could get 20 years out of the vehicle with one pack change (let's say $60,000 over 20 years) that would be equivalent to two $30,000 cars that would last ten years. Wonder what kind of financing options I could do....
This sig for rent.