More 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 – 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 “Machine” — thank God for the keyword search + NewsGoogle + RSS + Google Reader combo 😉
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 Hawai‘i who runs a Nissan LEAF on home solar.
“It goes about 100 miles on a charge and unless you’re going from one end of the island and back, that’s enough for the average driver,” says Lucas, who notes that most people will need about six solar panels to produce enough electricity for one EV. “When I come home, I just plug in and the sun is charging it.”
In highlighting Lucas’ 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.
“My LEAF is a great little car. It’s so good, even my sons like driving it,” Lucas tells The Garden Island. “[And] on days when I know I’ll be doing a lot of driving, I still have my pickup.”
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