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- cross-posted to:
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Quick back of the envelope calculations:
Rougly 2 m^(2) of solar array, so 250 watts.
Maybe 250 wH/mile, so an hour of charging for every mile.
A very small battery for weight and cost, I’d guess no more than 10 KwH so 40 mile range with 5 days of solar charging.
Compare this to residential electricity costs of $0.11/KwH, $1.10 vs 5 days of charge.
Unless it’s somewhere with lots of sun and no electricity, I don’t see it.
The plan is 200km of range. So realistically, 20 ~ 25kWh battery. This is from talking to one of the company directors at the Tokyo mobility show. To quote “The target is “2 million, 2 hundred”. 2 million yen purchase price, 200km range.”
So 12 days of sun, call it 2 weeks, to charge via solar vs $2 ish to plug in.
I can see an urban use for the vehicle but the solar part is unrealistic and an unnecessary cost for all but unlikely extreme cases.
For me, I would like this for the occasional bulky trip. So, it probably would be fine.
Yeah I agree, for driving. But I think it’s to support the use case as an emergency backup tool. It’s a big market in Japan, lots of people have backup power, solar panels feeding power banks, a bottled water supply (myself included). Due to the frequency of typhoons and earthquakes, which can interrupt utility supply. It’s not meant to be a range extender, as far as I understand.
“Japanese-based” is a good way to put it. The company is headquartered in Japan, but the cars are made in China and the management is Chinese. Chinese-made cars don’t sell well in Japan, so small Chinese EV manufacturers have started setting up automotive import companies in Japan to sell small Chinese EV buses to Japanese municipalities.
The moment I saw it had an app I assumed it was Chinese.
There are some JDM EV startups like KG Motors.
I love kei cars!