I was reading discover magazine
and came across an article about
how If enough people bought these cars
gas stations could Include Electrical power
With solar panels on there roofs.
They would only need to plug there cars in or something

I think it worked by making the fuel more efficient or something (i don't remember)


I was wondering .Could a battery in the car be charged quick Enough for People?

I have one for you, instead of charging your car, just having a standard battery that you can swap out at the station, with a fully charged one.

as for your question, can you charge a battery fast enough, well, if you are talking under 5 minutes, no. if you are talking leave car, go get lunch, come back fast enough, then yes.

Well a good bet for the area of a stations roof wood be 400-500 m2.
I have had quoted 100-200 watts m-2 at maximum so lets take the upper size value and 150 w/m.

So 500 x 0.15 = 60 kW of power

This is at peak production, so at midday on a cloudless day. The electricity production would rapidly drop of as the sun dipped in the sky.

A single litre of petrol contains roughly 34.8 MJ/l

A tank holds say 40 litres. That is 1.293 GJ of energy.

1 kWH is 3.6 MJ. So 1293/3.6 = 386 kWH for a single refill

That is just over 6 hours of perfect conditions for a single refill. Or obviously in the case of the hybrid you could save 1/6 of your tank by leaving it charging for an hour.

So in reality it is not going to achieve anything more than charging a few cars. Also demonstrates just how energy dense petrol is.

However it is a start and there could be further additions to the electricity generation in the form of other renewable sources.

edit: Does anyone know how many kWH the battery's in the hybrids available today are?