Comment by hnuser123456 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hnuser123456 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm in the US but have a 2 mile commute each way, and I don't drive to work every day (pre-covid). Uncommon but I'm not alone.

- For me, 5 miles a day would keep the battery topped off and I wouldn't have to visit a charger except on longer trips.

- Would also be much more palatable to limit the full-charge voltage to something a little lower, prolonging the battery's useful life, knowing it'll passively recharge daily.

- Would also enable more connected vehicle features.

- Given a choice between a car that slowly loses a bit of charge daily, or one that gains charge, everyone would pick one that gains.

- Would also lessen the fear of running out of charge a mile away from a charger and needing a tow truck, just wait a few hours if it's sunny, or at least charge enough to park somewhere safe and phone a friend to pick you up and leave it for a day.

- Could go on camping trips a bit further away and let it charge for a week, or use the AC/heater occasionally.

- If the car is covered in snow it can warm up the panels and melt some snow. Teslas can already do this but it's even more practical with PV on the roof.

As long as people understand this doesn't mean they can drive nonstop in the sun or that they'll get any significant short-term range boost, it's still extremely sensible.

> Given a choice between a car that slowly loses a bit of charge daily, or one that gains charge, everyone would pick one that gains.

I suspect most people would choose the one which is $2000 less and looks nicer.

> Could go on camping trips a bit further away and let it charge for a week, or use the AC/heater occasionally.

Totally agree here, but I’m not buying a car based on what I do a half dozen weekends a year either. More important is to ensure you have bigger battery capacity. Buying the Model Y Long range, I paid $8k 80 miles more range. That’s going to be far more useful than the 5 miles per day you might get out of this.

This is all around something I might pay for as an upgrade, but certainly not an important part of the purchase decision.

Those are all very real and legit advantages, but they are also very tiny, and for a very small subset of usecases of the car - where it is parked for most of a month, and only used for a couple of days here and there, and only for short trips, in a very sunny country, that also has bad infrastructure in terms of garages and charging (otherwise you just plug it in and forget about it), and yet where you actually have a space in the sun to park it.

Yes, those are all useful things but you have to (as a manufacturer, at least) weigh them against all the costs of building this feature, making production more complex, deal with the returns/breakages, etc. etc. So like the parent comment said, the consensus seems to be "just not worth it".

idk but from ppl i know the vast majority of car usage is for short trips like shopping/childcare/deliveries.

even a small ammount of self charging would go a very long way to make the car more pleasent to use.

Using a car for a 2 mile "commute" sounds very US. That's a 10 minute bike ride tops.

> Using a car for a 2 mile "commute" sounds very US.

Definitely.

> That's a 10 minute bike ride tops.

Perhaps, though it may not be possible cover that 2 mile commute by bike and survive.

At one point I was staying in a hotel along a small highway in Texas and saw a strip mall with restaurants on the other side. After about twenty minutes trying to find a way across I gave up and got in my car to cross the road.

Transit policy in many US cities and towns is somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile to anyone who is not driving a car.

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