Featured Elon Musk’s big lie about Tesla is finally exposed

That's good information for the "typical panel which is about 20% efficient when directly facing the sun." I'd be much more interested in what is possible using the current state of the art equipment in good conditions. Can you provide that for us 3 prius mike?

 

Take your pick from this chart:

https://www.nrel.gov/pv/assets/pdfs/best-research-cell-efficiencies.pdf

 

That's not quite what I asked about. Usually, if you denigrate a design it's because the design has specific faults. If Mike knows of the specific faults that make that design flawed, the rest of us can "stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us" if he gives us a quick description of the failure so we can jump off from there.

 

That’s a trip down memory lane. I remember in the early internet days the only reasonable and affordable way to get panels was to buy derelict ARCO panels that were being tore down en masse at the time for salvage.

only a couple websites had cheap volumes of panels that were unbelievably expensive to ship.

 

The best available supposedly was lightyear one, which from their 2022 press release was approximately 5 square meters and had a peak of 1 kw. Note the body shaped panels were likely much more efficient than 20% but following the curves of the body lowered peak production. In ideal conditions they could provide 6kwh/day according to the company. I don't even know how they got that large area. These were very expensive, which led to the canceling production. The company is still in business but trying to sell panels to other auto manufacturers, and perhaps making a less expensive vehicle. I'm sure they are concentrating on lowering production costs, not increasing efficiency right now.

They do have foldable panels, so I suppose you could unfold when parked if your spot was big enough say 6 meters by 5 meters (or around 18'x15'). Still this is an expensive proposition unless you don't move your vehicle much.

In most cases a bigger battery is cheaper, depending on your travel plans.

 

That chart tells you the current 'state of the art' efficiencies of all the PV chemistries currently in use or development. From it, you can compute the minimum size of a proposed towed collection array.