In this case it was a small single-cylinder petrol engine with a displacement of about 400 cm3 and a power of about 10 kW (it was then loaded with a power of about 7.5 kW). Its main drawback was the extreme noise and it is surprising that the author of the video endured the monotonous sound of the engine for a whole week (although the noise inside the car was only around 68-70 dB (A) ). He soon discovered that the moped was not enough to provide enough power, so he left it running all night (due to the noise, no one liked it, which is especially true of the other guests at the hotels where he slept). Since he drove hundreds of kilometers every day, often on the highway, despite the presence of this extender, he was worried about the range, which caused a decrease in speed (and therefore in consumption). As a result, he drove almost 3,000 km without connecting the car to the charger.
In this we can also see why there are no ordinary solar cars powered directly only by the “sun” and why the first attempts work with the energy accumulated for a longer period of time, even if only partially. The performance of their panels (under ideal conditions) is not even a tenth of a used single-cylinder, so if it had a problem the solar panels would practically charge nothing while driving. On the other hand, something else was also revealed. Even a slow charge of 7.5kW managed to charge most of the battery that the car consumed during long night trips, so in the case of a much shorter daily commute (to work and the like) also a power this low would be more than enough and in the case of connections to the parking lot it is not necessary to deal with chargers with power in the tens and not at all hundreds of kW. If you arrive with a flat battery, even this relatively low performance and slow performance is enough to prepare the car for the next day.
