Rivan truck tow vehicle
Just got home from 4 days at Indy. This rig was just a few spaces down in the lot. Towed from Virginia to Indy. He did say it was a bit of a challenge finding charging stations, but there are a couple...
Forum Discussion
rjstractor wrote:valhalla360 wrote:
What leaps and bounds are you speaking of?
The price of solar panels has come down with economy of scale and china dumping (it seems to have leveled out though) but I haven't seen any substantial improvements in years.
Problem with solar is a massive 3kw solar array (covering every square inch of a larger RV and costing may thousands) will generate around 10-12kwh per day if you aren't in shade (in shade and it will produce next to nothing). A vehicle even remotely capable of towing more than a tear drop is going to have a 125-150kwh battery bank, so you are talking many days to refill off solar.
Propulsion, just isn't there.
Nailed it. Many people, especially the "techy" type, reason that since data processing technology progresses exponentially, with my Apple Watch probably having more computing power than a mainframe did 30 years ago, that same exponential progression applies to everything. Smart people they may be, they seem to forget the limitations of things in the real world- like that the sun only provides 'x' watts per square meter. That's a constant regardless of solar panel technology. A 1 meter square panel will never come close to propelling anything heavier than a bicycle- the sun just doesn't provide enough juice.
I'll just leave this here. It weighs more than a bicycle.
https://worldsolarchallenge.org/about
https://www.bridgestone.com/bwsc/stories/article/2019/06/17-3.html#:~:text=Despite%20being%20big%2C%20solar%20cars,cars%20that%20weigh%20850%20kg.
