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Comment by breput | Hacker News Reader

There is no way that rooftop area is even as large as a standard solar panel (say 200 ft²). Even the most efficient panel is no more than 350W, so you're cutting your "700 W" more than in half right off the bat. Discounting less efficient cells, road dirt, and non-perpendicular angles and we'll be generous and say 300 W.

12 hours/day is the maximum possible solar duration so you really need to cut that in half to account for a full year on Earth. So we're down to 1 kWh/day and realistically much less if you happen to park under a tree or a bird poops on your roof. That will hopefully get you to a charging station but not much further.

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The 700W number comes from Aptera's website [1]. You don't have to believe them -- but to achieve that, they'd need about 3.5 square meters of solar panels, and if you look at the overhead picture on that page, it looks like it has about that much.

12 hours/day is the average solar duration. You'll get more than 12 hours of sunlight in the summer and less in the winter, but it'll average out.

And sure, if you park under a tree or let your panels get dirty, you'll reduce the amount of charge you can get. Same thing if you park in a garage or paint the roof. We can sit around all day and come up with ways to kill the performance. But you can just choose not to do these things.

[1] https://aptera.us/vehicle/

They sound great for shared cars by the hour.

Kinda think govs should mandate one per suburb street to give people a mobility option, especially when they don’t require full licence.

Or we could just design cities that didn’t require cars.

I wish but it’s too late. All the cities (at least in the States) being designed now are sub/exerbs.

I thought this too until I heard about Amsterdam. Apparently it used to be car-centric as well. Then they decided whenever they were going to re-do some district, they would re-do it as walkable. Sure, it takes 40 years, but it's possible.

Sure, lets compare $25k solution vs trillions of dollars...

One issue is that much of the above is about ideal conditions. One has to think about the average car owner.

Even IC engines have ideal conditions like don’t use a lead foot and light on the brakes, but the average driver isn’t getting the ideal MPG. Similar issue with solar.

I think Aptera isn't intended for the average car owner. It's for someone who wants a specific type of performance, likely an enthusiast.

There's several square meters on there, and they could be using high efficiency panels.

700W is perfectly reasonable. I have a 200W panel acting as shade over a tricycle which is much smaller and can easily charge a 1kWh battery in a day..

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