Did you know that we get enough energy from the sun in about 2 hours to provide all of the worlds energy needs? |||I brought up the same question at work, the rover has been going for a long time and I'm not sure but I don't think there are any gas stations on mars!
People need to stop using gas and force a change, as long as the oil companies make billions per quarter they will continue to pay everyone off so they can continue to use gas.
Check out the movie, who killed the electric car. it's an eye opening experience.|||http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=鈥?/a>
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|||There may have been some dirty tricks played by the competitors of some electric cars, but that happens in business all the time, not just on electric cars. Like BETA vs VHS. But if electric cars were really as good as you are saying it would be impossible to kill them. They aren't (yet). Accept it!
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|||About your energy from the sun reference, that's the total energy of each photon hitting the earth. Solar panels are only about 10-20% efficient, so that gets it up to say 15 hours. Then 2/3 of the earth is water, so now you're at 45 hours. Plus one half of the earth is dark, so you'll need twice as many solar panels/collectors than you are actually using.
At 45 hours to get 24 hours of power, you'd want to cover the whole world in solar panels/collectors to get that energy? Do you know how much energy and chemicals it would take to make that many solar panels? We are already collecting that energy in the form of plant life and photosynthesis.
|||the mars rover is about the size of a plastic hot wheels car you drove around as a kid. it is made of light weight metals. Mars has a thin atmosphere is closer to the sun and gives off more solar power.
It cost 5 billion dollars to build the lunar rover i don't know about you but i cant afford a billion dollar car. Plus it is not always sunny on earth we have something called weather and cloud cover also night time. the mars rover doesn't go very far just a few hundred feet a day.
If you want a cleaner burning engine build a different kind of engine, all scientist do is look for alternative fuels what we need is a alternative engine. no doubt battery power is going to play a large roll in that the only problem is they run out of juice and polute the ground instead of the air.|||The rover wouldn't run if anyone sat on it. I always figured transportation should actually transport people from place to place, but that's just me using logic again.
There IS this great form of transportation that's constructed of 100% biodegradable materials, runs on renewable resources, and costs less than the average vehicle sold today....it's called a horse. That's the point, isn't it? To make man give up all advances achieved since the Industrial Revolution?|||even with solar cells, the mars rover must take time out to recharge its batteries, and that takes time. in the future when solar cell technology further improves, we can build electric cars that run using solar cells. unfortunately that time is not now.|||Build us a practical electric car, and I'm sure people will buy it!
In the meantime, kwitcherbitchin and get out of that bizarre fantasy world!! |||So what else can you expect when you have national socialist democrats running things.|||The batteries---------- are not yet up to the task needed. Even the new Chevy Volt runs only about 40 miles on a charge.
Almost there --- but not just yet. |||Just put it in this light. Neither could you afford one, but it would take you a week to get to work.|||How many solar cells and batteries do you think it would take to truck 40 tons of concrete??
|||Well DO it U got the job and I bet U that U will blow it.|||The Mars rover's solar panels only provide enough power to move less than 1 MPH and go a maximum distance of a few hundred feet in a whole day. And it cost millions of dollars to make.
So several reasons. No Sun at night. Not powerful enough. Too expensive.
I do think that solar cells will get cheaper soon. There are BILLIONS of dollars being spent every year doing research into cheaper designs and building new factories to make solar cells. A friend of mine recently started a new job with a large high tech company starting up a new solar cell factory. One such factory costs many hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Maybe over one billion. It is essentially a simplified computer chip factory, because solar cells are very much like computer chips. The company expects that in 5 years they can cut the cost of these cells to a third of what it is now. But guess what? That factory will not run on solar power, because it costs too much to buy so many panels. No company could afford to build a solar powered solar cell factory and if they did the cells produced would be more expensive. Also, solar cell manufacturing uses lots of toxic chemicals and part of the high cost is to comply with the regulations about safe handling of these chemicals and clean disposal of waste.
But every home in a sunny climate should have solar panels on the roof in a few decades, if the cost comes down as much as these companies are betting it will. Otherwise they would never spend that kind of cash building these factories.
(EDIT) No, the point is we do *not* have the technology. At least not good enough for cheap mass production, which is what is needed for what you are talking about. I guarantee you that if we really did have the technology that every car on the planet would be solar powered now.
Nothing is impossible to the man who does not have to do it himself. Since you do not have to make solar cars a reality, to you they are possible. Give it a try. Learn the engineering. Then tell me how easy it is. You will be unpleasantly surprised at how hard it is.
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