DIY: A drivable solar rooftop for my Tesla Model Y (20 to 75 miles per day) 

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the minimizing injury part was GENIUS!!!

For those interested in integrated solar in an EV, you might want to look at the Aptera. The vehicle is currently in pre-production testing (safety, distance, etc.) and finalizing supply contracts. Designed to have integrated solar in the hood, dashboard, roof and rear deck.

I recommend using a custom tail hitch method to transfer the panels! I've seen someone else do it and it's better for your drag coefficient!!

This is a must for people who go to the beach often 🇮🇹🏖️

Would mention the benefit that you are providing a shade canopy as well for the car, keeping it cooler inside when parked in the hot sun.

I’m glad that I found this video! Subscribed and can not wait on updates about beta 2 version. Thanks 🙏

This is a must for tesla owners

The project is amazing. I'm really excited to see how it continues! Great job!!!

Tesla should do just what the Prius is doing with it’s hybrid plug in ev. It has a solar roof already integrated, the roof itself doesn’t give you much extra range but it’s definitely worth considering to implement and improve it.

Ah, I see you're using flex panels. Nice. I had this same idea awhile ago, but I was going to implement it as a popup canopy / tent instead.

Super cool project, subscribed.

This is awsome. should be sold commercially to every one..

just saw your post on reddit. This is exciting! Thanks for all of your work!

This is excellent! I have been planning on building something similar. Subscribed!

Nice👍🏻 I like this creative work

Very nice! Congratulations man

Very Good job. Extend the concept to RV Vans too!

I'm super excited! One thing I like to say.. there is no way to make gas out of thin air if you run out in the forest it will be almost if not impossible.. but with this tech you can def get yourself back to civilization without an issue.

There was a German start-up company where the entire car body was made of solar panels. There were several iterations but in the end you could hardly see that the body was made of solar panels. The company went bankrupt before series production. Apparently, large corporations didn't want to see this car on the road. In case anyone is interested, the company was called "Sono Motors" and the vehicle was called "Sion". It's a real shame that this vehicle never went into mass production!

Nice work on the concept. I have built a camper van and this is basically the same idea as RVs with solar, but the compact and extendable function is great. The only problem is this is really only useful for a Dooms Day/Overlanding scenario. If you built a solar carport at home it would basically do the same thing, without the drag loss.

Amazing ❤

very cool idea

Interesting Projekt keep on going please. I´ll watch out for progress.

Love it, that would be great for camping, if that's your thing

Place a portion of your expanding array under the glass roof, it will take weight off the expanding array on the roof, reduce drag, and block sun inside the cabin. It could also be functional without the exterior array if done properly with a 1kw storage unit so while driving you could tap in to the storage, and while parked the storage unit would account for peaks and valleys of the array production.

Would be cool if you could even plug in some of the ground mount camping solar panels as well when camping off grid.

Good work

This would be cool for camping as it could double as a shade

Aerodynamically speaking, having a rounded blunt edge and a long sharp tail works best. A lot of roof rack boxes actually work better when mounted backwards for this reason.

Instead of putting it on the roof, use a hitch rack and put the panel behind your car. That will significantly reduce the drag.

I have had the same idea. I figured a trailer with an expanding solar panel that extends over the car. The roof idea is good, but you can get more panels mounted to a trailer. And the trailer would be more aerodynamic behind a car. DC-DC charging offers a challenge without a pass-through DC battery or a modified EV. But that would be far more efficient if you could achieve this.

Connect all panels in series for 178V then feed DC-DC boost converter connected to 360V tesla battery directly.

Love this! DC2DC would be more ideal though... but comes with the obvious complications.

thought about this YEARS ago...most people are parked outside at work from 9-5, prime sunlight time. Auto manufactures should make the top layer of hoods, roofs and trunk decks out of solar panels, or a skin on top of the original metal. Most people that have electric vehicles are within 20 miles of home. And with the right design, be able to regenerate that usage within those 8 hours. Toyota had a small roof unit to run their cooling fan so the AC wouldnt have to work so hard in summer time when people would first get into their Priuseseses...just do it on more body panels. Any surface will grab sunlight of some sorts each day.

> cyclist collision Don't mount them such that they end up ad head height then. It can be made to hinge around the front edge, so when deployed, the front corners can be below head height and the rear ones above head height. Worst case you have to park in reverse to get the optimal array orientation. ps. i would be cool to maintain operation of a single panel at all times if that isn't the case already.

Genial proyecto. Precisamente yo estoy desarrollando algo parecido. Pero mi idea es hacerlo con paneles enrollables. En un rollo guardado en el maletero. El problema que veo es con la carga en DC. Pero si fuera posible igualar los voltajes de campo solar y bateria (360v) conectandolos en serie seria lo ideal.

Can you please guide about collapsible frame drawings for 9 solar plates, each 730 w and 39 kg weight fitted on caravan for solar powered tube well. Will stainless steel or iron tubes frame be able to withstand panels weight. Video for such drawing will be verry helpful for farmers throughout the world. Thanks

James @realsolarcars already built a dcdc to car his chevy volt from roofrack based panels. If you havent already spoken to him you maybe should. Another route might be sunsynk/deye inverters and the battery emulator project but btw doing this on a tesla is more tricky as they ota their software which can introduce incompatibilities with the emulator as can messages may change after updates that you have zero control over. But props to you for protyping your first model. I have an env200 nissan ev van (leaf in van clothing). Leafs are more hacked now so this should be easier. Just waiting for the cost of flexible panels in the uk to make more sense, especially if mods killing their resale value are required. Also low frequency inverters (read heavy) are kinder to the cars expensive chargers. Charging via an ecoflow or similar isnt as forgiving apparently.

When the panels are deployed, can you still open the rear hatch of your model Y? I'm very interested in this setup being used in the context of off-grid car camping. A dream scenario would be if the solar power gain can partially or completely offset the power use of camp mode at night. I would love to contribute or help out in any way possible, my wife and I do a lot of car camping.

I believe it would be necessary to install super powerful inverters on a scale, a type of Tesla coil that could either supply part of the vehicle's energy or instant charging... 4000W is a large amount of energy...

Great idea, great work so far, but this is a huge project, and I think it would need a lot of diverse skills to get to your full product vision. I think you should be thinking about minimum viable product. Your current frame mechanism, without any power for the actuators is probably good enough for a lot of people. There is a lot of development work to do for beta 2... it might be a better business plan to finish beta 1 as a low cost product and have manufacturing... basically just a specialized rack for use with solar inverters (I guess you have an ecoflow delta in the trunk? I think as a means of organizing storage of solar panels for manual static deployment, this is already a viable product with an addressible market. There are a lot of model y's out there (and small cars that can fit similar roof racks) Just selling a deployable rack, to plug into a bog standard inverter, is probably a good product. All the actuators you are planning for beta 2? they add cost and complexity, and aside from star trek value of watching the deployment, I don't think it provides any value to private car ownsers. I understand the value of the automated deployment for commercial applications, but likely not worth it for personal vehicles. I looked at the outputs available on an ecoflow delta 2, and highest output option is USB-C ... 100W without going through the inverter. Looked at Jackery and specs are similar... It's just the low voltage outputs limit are inherently limiting... hmm... looking at an ecoflow delta 2/pro where they have the DC side port for connecting up extra batteries. I imagine you could use that for some kind of DC-DC voltage up converter hooking into that. Otherwise you add a lot of cost to design implement your own specialized battery/solar/inverter box. A lot of work left to do...

I wonder if a solar panel that rolls and unrolls like on the space station is feasible? Perhaps cost prohibitive? But if it’s possible, could make for a very minimal frame

Mppt charger and a small lithium battery to work as a buffer. The vehicle charger has to be dc charger and it will pull from battery and solar

could it maybe be taken apart or folded to fit in the trunk? should make aero much better. 150lbs of stuff being lifted doesnt seem easy or safe tho

What are the details of the 440W panel that weighs that little? I'm interested! And the beta 1 panels? I have a smaller application too.

For those that may find my rooftop solar build helpful.. First off I don't drive on the highway at 70 mph often but have.. okay that said, I mounted two 100 watt flat mono solar panels on my Ford E150 Explorer Conversion Custom Camper van... I used an aluminum frame adjustable rack , 2 panel on separate racks one front o other front to back... panels can be raised in two directions front to back and vise versa ... okay I did not use one single screw.. they are attached to my roof.. using 3M double sided heavy duty mounting tape. I simply cleaned the surfaces well and applied during a nice dry arm summer day.. let se for about two days then completed project by placing panels on racks.. I did this 4 years ago,.. those racks / panels are like part of the steek roof. I drive it in all weather at an average speed of 45 to 65 .. mph .. I live 12 miles outside of town.. I run a fridge TV PCs stereo gear charge phones flash lights etc.. have an onboard AC unit as well but do not rub my AC off batteries ... could but I only have 300 amp hours s... anyway my point is you can mount a nice solar setup and not drill and do it safely no problem...

Have you predicted or calculated alternative material science Abel to achieving this functionality at the building stage of the car?

Very cool - what were the costs to get everything needed?

Looks like an easy project based on abilities of average joes. The dc to dc is pretty easy to impliment by using inverters and basic recifiers and capacitor bank for smoothing. The hard part is tapping into the 400v bus on the car without tesla system voiding your cars warrenty and sacaficing super charging access on there system. The only way this product makes useful for everyone involved is using a solar generator is as far as this will go on the consumer level without warrenties being voided. A small solar array wont make 400v without up converting the voltage as a small loss in milage.

Since many cars are garage-parked during daylight hours, why not design a fixed version for roof mounting on structures?

shape the panels like pizza slices ... point sharp side forward for aerodynamics motorise the slices so the open like you do a deck of cards in your hand .. you can fit two circles over the roof you may loose a bit of surface area but get better aerodynamics in return and easy mechanised deployment.

The inverters exist they are European inverters with batteries up to 800v for the battery. They use them for residential purposes. I was looking into direct contact to the batteries and that is the thing I stumbled crossed.

Thank you for sharing this I was hanging out the whole video to see the set up close up..sad 😢 Just heard you speak and not showing what it looks like close up.

how about a roll of solar comming of your trunk

I have solar panels on the roof of my home without a battery. Do you have instructions or can point me in the right direction on how to charge my car directly from the panels if the grid were to ever go down?

I would probably like more the idea of something you can carry in the trunk and assemble it when needed like camping or open area on the floor and plug to the car instead. It’s risky to have that on the glass I think.

How much weight can you move to the interior ceiling?

Please explain *how* you got the power into your car without inverters?

I think the aerodynamic drag would reduce the charging gains by enough that it’s not worth gaining 24 miles. Battery technology keeps evolving and soon there will be higher distance ranges and the price will come down

EVs could have at least a small integrated roof panel to gain a few bonus miles a day.. for many people they'd only need that daylight charge for much of their local driving, leaving fast charging and home charging for longer distance trips. Even a miniscule one could help to just maintain a minimum state of charge in a car sat unused for weeks on end rather than letting a battery drain down until it's flat.

The range would be impacted also by the weight of the components. Why not add lightweight flexible solar panels that fold out over the entire vehicle, so that it gets sun wherever it is? Altenatively, why not have the solar fixture be removable and then be put into the trunk when not in use? You might want to have a lock on the solar fixture while it is out so no one can steal it.

You should be hired by Tesla

I wonder how much wasted efficiency you get carrying that thing on your roof

Why dont you upgrade the system to use 600w panels? They are the same size.

Invention! freaking what are we talking exactly here.

wild

at 15:07 you show an image of a video and say he was helpful, but I have no idea who he is or what video it is.

put the solar panels on the car body panels

Eso en España, con tanto rumano no duraría puesto ni cinco minutos

Wait, did you say a 20% loss for having this mounted? So if you had a 300 mile range you now have a somewhere around a 240 mile range but you can gain 30 miles if you let it sit perfectly in the sun for 5 hours? So then you walk away with 270 miles instead of your original 300? The maths aint mathing here.

Se ele inventasse isto no Brasil tava lascado, poderia comprar mil desses por mês os ladrões levavam todos.

I wonder if there is a way to keep the batteries warm with these solar. The EV's are proving not to do so good in cold weather.

The disturbed air flowing over a roof mounted solar panel would lose you a lot of the gains that the solar panel is meant to achieve. Plus, it looks stupid.

you said 4kw, that's 16 square meters of panels

God said to pave the streets with gold. Put permanently sympathetic magnets to the earth sun galaxies double torus magnetospheres and precious metal coils underneath your car.

Last thing capitalism wants is free solar energy 😂

Roof is the wrong place. You will loose more energy than you'll ever create with this. Better would be using tow hitch to store the panels.

Even is such a contraption is FREE, one would probably struggle to get anything out of it. If you actually drive a car at least a bit(more than 50 miles a day), the extra drag will probably negate any benefits? At a cost of 4000$ you would run your car for more miles than the EV would be ever able to cover in its lifetime... Even if the whole thing would be deployed automatically not sure there would be takers...and thieves would be more than happy to help you to get it off the roof pretty swiftly too. In MHO his is just an idea, which is not viable in real life and probably never will. The losses are too great comparing to possible gains, lets be realistic about the subject. Yes, it is easy to criticize but the math simply does not add up no matter from which angle we would look at it.

This is a vanity project. It won’t amount to much in the long run for the following reasons: 1. Even after several generations it’ll still be an appendage attached to the roof of what otherwise would be a clean aesthetic. A car designed to look sleek and sporty is not the platform to attach such an appendage. This concept is not new when conceived for a big boxy vehicle like a Semi trailer. And that means that the big boys will already design such systems for that context and this guy won’t have any advantage against them. 2. The utility is needed only on occasion, and only on very specific occasions, like camping. This means there’s only a very small subset of Model Y (or Model 3) owners, and even they will be hesitant to choose this over a portable battery with its own unfoldable solar panel. A portable battery is something that can be transferred to any car, or camper, you own, rather than being dedicated to just your Model Y. A lot of people who own Teslas own multiple cars. 3. It requires deployment for each use. If this were solar paint or a solar wrap, which might not produce as much power but could be active even when the car is in motion and would require no extra effort on the part of the driver, then I’d say you’d have a hit. But it’s not. It’s a deployable product with moving parts that could break, snag or be damaged by hail or wind or ice.

patented? nonsense. dont even try to limit freedom. yep even your own law says gov cannot legalize intervene in freedom matters. at all. how about consult your own lawyers about freedoms before scaring people into serving your spoken limitations.

Useless in the cold dark snow belt. Just like an EV.

Great project, I support it and keep my fingers crossed. The sub went and I'm waiting for further development. Greetings from Poland :) ikona Zweryfikowane przez społeczność