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Sweden is testing a semi-truck trailer covered in 100 square meters of solar panels
(www.popsci.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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Yeah but we're talking 100 square metres here, that could make a significant difference.
Only about half of it would actually be producing power at any one time, at a sub-optimal angle.
But I'm sure someone did the math and it makes some kind of sense for whatever use case they're imagining. Would still probably be better to have static solar panels along highways and charging trucks with some kind of pantograph setup instead.
I would not put too much weight on that. The number of solar roadway projects and similar tech that when you run the numbers shows it being a complete waste of time - only for many different cities to invest in running a test (at their own expense) only for the project to fail later on for being too costly and not giving the benefits they were promised. Solar solutions seem to be the modern day monorail grift from the Simpsons...
This is the type of thing we should be investing in first IMO. A solar truck might make sense some day when solar is cheaper and more efficient - but we currently have a lot of static infrastructure around solar we could be building instead of these less efficient trucks (that is in terms of use of the solar cells, rather than the trust itself).
That's basically the way interurban trains operated for years before the highway system and personal vehicles replaced that mode of transport. It wasn't solar powered back then, but the idea makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, I know it's basically reinventing trains, but it would be a great inbetween solution to have trucks stay in a dedicated lane in a semi-automatic mode on long stretches, while they can service the last few kms without having to transfer the load.
If you call them PanoPods you can probably get venture capital funding and then just go buy a train and paint it with a cool design.