Go Solar Power For Homes

Well, you might argue that the solar power car doesn’t have anything to do with solar power for homes, but I disagree. You can park your solar power car in the garage, cant you? (Have the garage doors open and shut with solar power for homes!)

Besides, any good development to do with solar power anywhere has a knock on beneficial effect on solar power for homes in my opinion. Everything is connected!

So, how would you like to buy a brand new solar power car for $5,500, leave it outside in the sun for a day and a half and then do a 150km road trip without ever stopping at a gas station? No petrol costs. No environmental  issues. Just the journey and the destination!

Well here is some good news. The Chinese company, Zhejiang 001 Group has just produced China’s first ever completely solar- powered automobile.

The compact efficient solar power car uses solar panels on its roof, turning sunshine into the electrical solar energy that moves the solar power car. They say that the solar panels will absorb 95 percent of the solar energy that lands on them, transforming roughly 15 percent of that into electrical current to activate the solar power car.

The solar power car is a response by the Chinese government to head off an oncoming energy crisis. So far the group has only made a few of these cars. They are set to sell for 38,000 yen, roughly US$5,500.

According to their scientists, if you give the car 30 hours of sunlight to feed off, it will give you back 150km of clean good driving, leveling out at 5km per hour of sunlight.

To have a car that will transport me to and from my work every day, while making no carbon emissions, I think US$5,560 would be very reasonable.

Think about it. Given that you would have no fuel costs, how long would it take for you to get your money back? Well, let’s work it out …

According to the AAA’s media site for retail gas prices, the average cost for a gallon of regular today (11/30/2008) is $1.825 and for a gallon of diesel the price is $2.756. (Believe it or not, in mid July 2007 those figures were $4.114 and $4.845 respectively!)

According to  fueleconomy.gov the most efficient car right now is the Toyota Prius at roughly 45 miles per gallon.

So at the very lowest costs, every 45 miles of driving would cost you $1.83. So, I’m no mathematics genius but correct me if I am wrong. You would need to drive your solar power car for just 3,005 miles to break even. After that, all your ‘fuel costs’ would be free.

Don’t know about you, but my car is already at 75,000miles, so I’m thinking that this might be a winner. (Maybe pimping up the look a bit might help though!)

From Sam Deane,
your solar power for homes guide,
at www dot go solar power for homes dot com.

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Info via:  yellowsandblues.com
The Trackback, http://www.gosolarpowerforhomes.com/solar-power-for-homes/chinese-go-solar-power-for-homes-with-solar-power-car by Sam Deane, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

 

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