Is it now possible to recharge the battery of an electric car with a solar charger?

Question

DAVID:---I wasn't thinking so much about chargers attached to the moving car, but located in one's garage or in parking areas near his job.

Answer 1

There was an article a while back where some techies had about 5 different vehicles built for solar power and the all ran really well in the outback but not that many places, on earth, has that much sun.

god only knows what each vehicle's power system costs so, I guess we are not ready with the cheap technology, just yet.

Possible? Yes, affordable? I doubt it.

Answer 2

We have the technology. There are solar powered car races done mostly by colleges and reasearch firms, and that's basically how those cars work. The solar panel charges the battery wich runs the motor. It's just that the amount of solar panels needed to run your average car is too much to run the car entirely on sun power.

Answer 3

The solar panels just don't produce that much power. To produce enough to charge a large battery bank takes real power. To do it with solar cells they would need to be 5 miles sq.

Answer 4

Yes, but the technology is still very young, very expensive, and very inefficient. Here's what Wikipedia got to say:

Battery electric vehicles fitted with solar cells would extend their range and allow recharging while parked anywhere in the sun. However, with present and near-term engineering considerations, it seems that the more likely place for solar cells will generally be on the roofs of buildings, where they are always exposed to the sky and weight is largely irrelevant, rather than on vehicle roofs, where size is limited.

Answer 5

yes, but not as quickly as it needs to happen. you need to be able to charge your batteries fairly quickly during the time you drive the car, especially if you are driving more than 100 miles in a day. if you drive say 40 miles to work, park the car for 8 hours, then drive 40 miles home. you should have no problem keeping the batteries charged enough to drive everyday. however if you plan to drive 500 miles in a day, you are going to have a problem as you wont be able to generate enough solar power to keep the batteries charged for that distance. and that is the problem with electric cars, range. most people wont have a problem as they put on less than 30 miles per day driving, but those that need to drive long distances are going to have problems until solar panel technology improves rather substantially.

Answer 6

Assume that you need fifty horsepower for your electric car.  That's 746 watts/hp x 50 hp = 37,300 watts, which is about three times the power your house takes.  A battery that provides 50 hp for, say, five hours will have to hold 37,300 watts x 5 hr x 3600 sec/hr = 671 megajoules of energy.  You'd like to charge such a battery, if indeed one exists, in 24 hours of sunshine.  That means that the solar array would have to provide 671e6 joules / (24 hrs x 3600 sec/hr) = 7770 watts.  

Now go out and learn what it takes to make an eight kilowatt solar array.