[liamkinne]

Stop putting solar panels on cars. It’s just not worth the cost or complexity.

That square meter of PV is going to get you at most 250W in perfect conditions. Conditions that aren’t found in cities or even at ground level in residential areas.

[thejohnconway]

Their page addresses that point, it says the panel will charge for 20km of driving in a day, and the average micro car does 12 (not exactly sure what a micro car is though...). Not having to plug anything in is actually a pretty big deal in many European cites where people do not have garages, and on-street chargers are still sparse.

I don't know if this will work, but things like this deserve some consideration.

[blamazon]

> not exactly sure what a micro car is though...

A popular modern example is the Citroen Ami: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_Ami_(electric_vehicle)

Vintage, the Isetta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta

[bryanlarsen]

There are two main classes of microcar in Europe. This particular one is classified under L6e in Europe, so has a maximum design speed of 45km/h.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadricycle_(EU_vehicle_classi...

[mysterydip]

I would be concerned about finding a sunny enough spot in a city to charge. Even their promo video showed it sitting in the shadow of some building.

[sidewndr46]

there are these things called garages. People in many places have them. In big cities, you usually wind up parking in one. They tend not to be made of transparent materials.

[throwbadubadu]

Start putting solar everywhere possible. It depends on lot of factors, not every city is built the same, and even in non-perfect conditions power collected is just a monotically increasing function over time.. cost and complexity always go down with more mass adoption.

[throwawaaarrgh]

Besides the fact that it probably charges enough to keep operating most of the day, the swappable batteries makes it better than existing micromobility solutions that need to be picked up and recharged. With these a service vehicle can just drop by and replace the battery in 60 seconds. If they partner with gas stations in their cities, people could do it themselves. This design is very exciting

[mike-cardwell]

If you're going to attack the idea, at least address the bits of the page that talk about the thing you think doesn't work:

> Even in northern countries like The Netherlands the sun gives enough energy for average urban use. The solar panel can charge up to 20 km per day in Europe. The average micro car usage is around 12 km per day.

[komali2]

It's just really frustrating to think a path we might go down, after trying cars for 100 years, is using (sure, small) cars for daily trips of 12km. We're going to maintain travel and parking infrastructure, for 12km trips? Really? That's so much space that could be reclaimed.

I'm not a big fan of scooters but most taipei trips cap out around 10km. A scooter takes a 1x.5 meter spot at home and in the city, and in lanes of traffic we stack three to five wide while moving. They still don't beat busses, trains, bikes, or walking, but they're a damn sight better than a private car no matter the size. If you're concerned about rain, you can wear a rain jacket like hundreds of thousands here do without issue.

[bryanlarsen]

It's a €‎6000 car. If that solar panel is significantly adding to cost and complexity, it's not being reflected in the price.

[bryanlarsen]

Their marketing claims 1kWh per day when perfect conditions would give 1.5 - 2 kWh, so they're not misleading anybody.

[SamBam]

How many charging stations are in a typical European city?

The point of this is that it can be introduced in any city, anywhere, without needing to wait for charging infrastructure to catch up.