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0 pointsSECProto7y ago0 comments

That would explain why Solar City has thus far failed to account for the significantly reduced amount of solar energy that reaches Mars. Solar cells can't charge EVs fast enough on Earth. With the same panel area, it would take most of a Martian year to charge a single EV on Mars.

What are you talking about? Solar can charge an electric car just fine. Take desired charge rate in kW, divide by nameplate power output of panel, and that's how many panels you need. If you live somewhere with constraints on solar input (eg reduction due to clouds, distance from sun, or night) then you can increase the panel amount, maybe add some stationary batteries to timeshift the input.

Edit: not meant as a personal attack at all, but noticed your other comments around the thread are loose enough with the facts. Musk could learn a thing or two :)

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reitzensteinm7y ago

Your edit is very rude. If you're going to call him out, you should at least take the time to give an example.

SECProtoOP7y ago

Their profile says they don't read comment threads after 4 hours, so I didn't think they will see. But my mention of "being loose with the facts" and "Musk could learn a thing or two" was referring to another post of theirs where they said:

There have been [...] quite a few articles about Boring Co's liberties with the truth and its outright lies to the people in the neighborhood where the tunnel is being built - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18704761

I thought this was, itself, misleading - I follow the Boring Co pretty closely, and I only saw one negative article re: the local neighbourhood around the test tunnel - and said article was mostly raising the plight of the locals with the airport/highway/industrial activity in the area. The Boring Company was only attacked as a bit of a bogeyman.

Combine that with this sentence in their original post, which I did already call out for being flagrantly misleading:

Solar cells can't charge EVs fast enough on Earth. With the same panel area, it would take most of a Martian year to charge a single EV on Mars

The only way I can see that being true is if it's talking only about solar cells on the roof of the vehicle (which no one technically minded should expect to power a car).

gamblor9567y ago

https://blog.pickmysolar.com/how-many-solar-panels-does-it-t...

From a pro-Tesla site. It would take 75 solar panels to charge a single Tesla in a day. Max theoretical efficiency on Mars is roughly 1/15th of Earth norm, not taking into account Martian weather, and assuming you are always somehow directly facing the sun the entire Martian day. Take weather and the day-night cycle into account, and it takes about a Martian year to charge one Tesla.

Google is your friend. A single search on Boring Co shows at least a dozen articles about their misrepresentative claims, so I assume the Google personalization filter is effecting both of our search results.

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