Solar-charged LEAF saves Hawaii man money

LEAF-solar-cayenneMore and more stories featuring solar-charged drivers are appearing in more and more American mainstream media outlets.

For example, in the last few weeks alone, SolarChargedDriving.Com has summarized three stories [‘Utah man drives solar LEAF’, ‘Illinois man among first to solar-charge Focus EV’‘Snowy Ithaca has enough sun to fuel solar Volt’] recently published in small to mid-size American media outlets ā€“ The Ithaca Journal, The Salt Lake City Deseret News & MLive.Com — spotlighting individuals who are combining EV + PV.

Another one of these stories recently found its way into the SolarChargedDriving.Com Google Reader ā€œMachineā€ — thank God for the keyword search + NewsGoogle + RSS + Google Reader combo šŸ˜‰

Solar-charged driving is taking off in Hawaii these days, according to a story in The Garden Island with the apt headline, ‘Sun-charged cars tap into home solar systems.’

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Running his LEAF on sun
The article focuses both on EVs, and on EV + PV. It zooms in on the story of Paul Lucas of Solar Engineering Hawaiā€˜i who runs a Nissan LEAF on home solar.

ā€œIt goes about 100 miles on a charge and unless youā€™re going from one end of the island and back, thatā€™s enough for the average driver,ā€ says Lucas, who notes that most people will need about six solar panels to produce enough electricity for one EV. ā€œWhen I come home, I just plug in and the sun is charging it.ā€

In highlighting Lucasā€™ calculations, this news story does a nice job of examining the comparative economic merits of running a car on gasoline as opposed to charging up an EV with home solar generated electricity.

Lucas’ conclusion: EV + PV will save you $20,000 over 100,000 miles as compared to a gasoline car that gets 20 mpg and at a price of $4.60 per gallon.

ā€œMy LEAF is a great little car. Itā€™s so good, even my sons like driving it,ā€ Lucas tells The Garden Island. ā€œ[And] on days when I know Iā€™ll be doing a lot of driving, I still have my pickup.ā€

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