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Vehicles Soon To Have Solar Roofs
We don’t think twice about seeing a home with solar panels on the roof, do we? Elon Musk’s Solar City recently unveiled solar shingles. They have multiple styles of what looks like regular shingles, but each one is a mini-solar panel that collectively, produce more power than you could ever get on the same size roof with conventional solar panels.
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Did you hear the recent announcement from President Trump that the proposed southern wall with Mexico will now have solar panels built into it as well?
The entire roof of the 1.9 million sq. ft. Gigafactory, in partnership with Panasonic in Nevada, will be covered in solar panels as well. If things go according to plan, the plant won’t even be connected to the electric grid infrastructure. Solar panels, especially the ones made in China, have really become dirt cheap.
The real point of this post is to tell about the carmakers are soon going to have solar panels built into the roofs of most vehicles, especially EVs and hybrids. It’s already factory installed on the Tesla and Prius coming out this fall. Panasonic even plans to start making kits to add solar panels to current conventional vehicles. It takes some of the load off a regular vehicle’s charging system making parts like alternators last longer. My brother recently had solar panels installed on the roof of his motorhome and he rarely has to plug into electricity anymore because he also installed a bank of 6 batteries along with an AC/DC inverter.
Here’s an article from this week’s Automotive News talking about the future of automotive solar roofs:
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