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What You Need To Know About Electric Cars and Solar Chargers

The production of electric cars is a rapidly growing market. It is expected to grow from 3.5 million globally in 2020 to 15 million by 2025.

Electric cars are more cost-effective and offer a better driving experience for consumers. In addition, using an electric car decreases the amount of pollution in the environment. This, combined with solar energy, has the potential not only to dramatically decrease carbon emissions, but also to cut down your electricity bill!

What’s an Electric Car?

An electric car is a vehicle that runs on electricity instead of gasoline or diesel. This means that the car does not release any emissions into the air, which decreases the amount of pollution in the environment.

Electric cars are also more cost-effective because they are cheaper to maintain over time. They are cheaper to charge because you don’t have to purchase gasoline or spend money on gas stations. You can even charge your vehicle with solar power!

Types of Electric Cars

Generally speaking, there are three types of electric cars: Hybrid, Plug-in Hybrid, and Electric Cars.

electric car charging from a solar charger

This article focuses on the latter, i.e., fully-electric vehicles, since they are the ones that stand to benefit the most from solar charging technologies.

Why Buy an Electric Car?

Electric cars offer the best driving experience for consumers. They offer a smoother, quieter ride and can accelerate faster than traditional cars.

In addition, electric cars are more cost-effective and reduce your carbon footprint. If you want to decrease your carbon emissions and save money on gas, it’s time to buy an electric car!

EV’s Energy Source

Electric cars need to be charged by plugging them into a power outlet. Thus, the electricity they consume comes directly from your home’s power grid. Depending on the power source mix used by your home’s energy supplier, it is likely that this electricity is not from low-carbon sources, and is instead what we call “dirty” energy, i.e. generated from fossil fuels.

Charge your Electric Car with Solar Energy

Solar panels harness the sun’s energy and convert it into electrical energy that can be used to power your home, as well as your car. If you have a large rooftop or a parking lot, solar panels may be an attractive option for you.

If you manage to get solar panels installed in your own house, you could use the electricity generated by your solar panels to charge your electric vehicle. This way, you can ensure you are using 100% renewable energy to power your electric car.

solar panels charging an electric car at home
A house with solar panel installation, able to completely charge an electric car

The benefits of using solar panels to charge your electric vehicle are endless. Not only do they decrease carbon emissions, but they also cut down on your electricity bill!

Solar panels on electric cars

That brings us onto the next thought: Would it be possible to have solar panels on your car’s rooftop, and power your car indefinitely? While this is indeed a genius idea, unfortunately this would not be possible with today’s technology capabilities.

It is true that having solar panels installed on the outside frame and/or rooftop of an electric car could indeed charge the car’s battery while on the road, even if just a little. However, the impact of this solar charge would be minimal. A quick mathematical calculation shows that more than 24,000W of solar energy would be needed to continuously power a car without ever running out of battery.

Given that the average modern solar panel produces around 10W per square foot, you would need a surface of 2,400 sq. ft. worth of solar panels to produce enough energy to continuously power an electric vehicle. That would need to be a very large car, indeed!

Well, there goes our dream of harnessing the energy from the sun while driving. At least we can’t say that we didn’t try.

Conclusion

This article has covered the basics of what you need to know about electric cars and solar chargers. Electric vehicles are the future of driving, and charging your EV with solar energy is the best way to ensure you are using a 100% renewable energy mix, save money, and protect our environment from carbon emissions while we drive.

We also explored the possibility of designing an electric vehicle with solar panels attached on the roof, which could potentially be powered indefinitely thanks to the energy harnessed from the sun while on the road. However, Science proved us that this is far from being possible with current technology capabilities. Who knows, perhaps someday in the future this will be possible. But for now, we’ll have to stick with home-installed solar panels.

Matt
Matthttps://chargeruniverse.com
Hey, I'm Matt, and I'm a student currently completing my masters in Electrical & Electronics Engineering. In my spare time, I like writing about chargers, electronics, and all gadgets related, here in Charger Universe. All opinions and views expressed in my blog posts are mine, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

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