Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking there and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says, let the sunshine,
Speaker 1: Let the sunshine in the sunshine in. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Poke, and I'm Joe McCormick. And Hey, solar Power,
Speaker 1: Solar Power. I have a question for you, Jonathan, ask
Speaker 1: me your question. Okay, So, I know there's this great
Speaker 1: cost about getting rockets into space because you've got to
Speaker 1: use all this fuel and all that. Why don't they
Speaker 1: just make solar powered rockets. That's a great question. It's
Speaker 1: not sure it is. Think of it this way. The Sun.
Speaker 1: The Sun is a very powerful object, right, and there's
Speaker 1: even more of it in space and and and the
Speaker 1: energy that we're using on Earth, most of it, in
Speaker 1: some form or another, we owe to the Sun. If
Speaker 1: you trace it back far right, that's true. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost all solar I guess maybe not like geo thermal.
Speaker 1: But if you're talking about wind power, well that's driven
Speaker 1: by pressure differentials that are caused by the Sun heating
Speaker 1: the crust of the Earth. Uh. If you're doing solar power,
Speaker 1: of course that's solar. If your coal is technically plants
Speaker 1: and animals that have been compressed over a long period
Speaker 1: of time, and where that's part of the light cycle,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, they made their energy from solar exactly. Light
Speaker 1: cycles just make me think of tron Even hydroelectric, you
Speaker 1: could say, is solar because the sun heats the oceans,
Speaker 1: which causes the water vapor to rise up and then
Speaker 1: travels up, rains down, and then the rain coming down
Speaker 1: from the upper elevations is what powers those turbines at
Speaker 1: the hydroelectric plants. Yeah. So I don't see why your
Speaker 1: question is so silly unless you're talking about using solar panels. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well the officially problem. I don't think you could power
Speaker 1: a rocket with electricity in any case probably no, No,
Speaker 1: that will not be do not really work? No, Okay,
Speaker 1: So what we're really getting at here is that solar
Speaker 1: power there are some problems with efficiency, which we've talked
Speaker 1: about before. Solar panels have an efficiency that for the
Speaker 1: consumer market tends to top out right around something like that. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are some prototypes and some that are used for
Speaker 1: very high level uh like space application stuff that keeps
Speaker 1: you know, satellites power that kind of thing that can
Speaker 1: reach somewhere in the realm of in lab conditions. But
Speaker 1: those are under ideal circumstances. And so we're talking about
Speaker 1: not even being able to capture all the energy that
Speaker 1: comes in through the sun. So the sun hits these panels,
Speaker 1: the panels are only able to capitalize on twenty of
Speaker 1: the energy that's hitting it. And then on top of that,
Speaker 1: you have to worry about when the sun is not shining,
Speaker 1: it doesn't translate into that much electricity. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where you might say, hey, what's
Speaker 1: the point and even trying to make a solar powered vehicle,
Speaker 1: but that hasn't stopped people from making solar powered vehicles.
Speaker 1: No kidding, solar powered vehicles. Let's talk about those today. Okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds good. I was I was ready to talk
Speaker 1: about the Age of Aquarius. But we can switch gears. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's solar power, renewable energy source. Right, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about running out of it. Uh. If if
Speaker 1: we run out of solar power, we have bigger problems.
Speaker 1: We've we've sort of run out of life. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: also probably about four billion years in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we've got some time. I mean, you know, don't
Speaker 1: like plan ahead too far. You know, we've got to
Speaker 1: have some flexibility here. But then it's also it's clean energy.
Speaker 1: At least the actual energy you get is clean. Right.
Speaker 1: The way we have to create stuff to capture that
Speaker 1: energy may or may not be clean. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in a second. But the you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about you're not creating um greenhouse gas emissions by
Speaker 1: using this. It's just clean electricity. So there are reasons
Speaker 1: people have been really interested in using solar panels and
Speaker 1: solar power to make vehicles go. You also don't have
Speaker 1: to stop somewhere specific and refill it basically anywhere the
Speaker 1: sun is shining. I mean, there's a reason you would
Speaker 1: put solar panels on say a Mars rover that it's
Speaker 1: it's continuously replenishable as long as you're basically outdoors in
Speaker 1: a place where you can get sun. Right. You don't
Speaker 1: have to go to Mars and pre build gas stations
Speaker 1: there right right, So that's you know, a huge advantage. Uh.
Speaker 1: And these are these are really important things that people
Speaker 1: have looked into. Two while designing you know, some some
Speaker 1: really cool vehicles in various ways, not just we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about lots of different types. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about some cars, boats, and even some some planes, some
Speaker 1: aircraft that use solar power to generate the thrust they
Speaker 1: need to fly, which is pretty phenomenal when you think
Speaker 1: about it. I don't believe you, except I do because
Speaker 1: we've talked about it a little bit before. But did
Speaker 1: I not. Were I not to know about it already,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't leave you. Yeah, yeah, because again we're thinking
Speaker 1: about the fact that solar a single solar cell is
Speaker 1: not generating that much electricity, and you think about the
Speaker 1: amount of power you need to have an electric motor
Speaker 1: capable of, say turning a propell or fast enough to
Speaker 1: generate thrust or to propel a car forward so that
Speaker 1: it can race along, uh the Australian Outback, because we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about that too. Um, it's pretty phenomenal stuff.
Speaker 1: It does mean that people have had to make some
Speaker 1: big advances in everything from solar panel technology to battery
Speaker 1: technology to just engineering the design of aircraft and h
Speaker 1: and other vehicles. So let's talk about some of the
Speaker 1: reasons before we do that. Let's tell us some of
Speaker 1: the reasons that are kind of the downside of solar power. So,
Speaker 1: for one, we we kind of mentioned, you know, you
Speaker 1: kind of have to have sunlight. If you don't have sunlight,
Speaker 1: then you're not getting power. Right. It's more useful perhaps
Speaker 1: in some regions than in other regions. And you need
Speaker 1: to work out that entire thing where if the sun
Speaker 1: isn't shining and you still want to drive your car
Speaker 1: or boat or etcetera, then you have to you have
Speaker 1: to have some sort of energy storage device or else
Speaker 1: you don't go. You've got the problem that it just
Speaker 1: simply isn't as powerful as say an internal combustion engine
Speaker 1: or like a really big battery stored up with energy
Speaker 1: from the socket. Right, even if you did have a
Speaker 1: battery and you were using the solar power to charge
Speaker 1: the battery, in general, you're not. It's hard to generate
Speaker 1: the same kind of torque that you would get from
Speaker 1: an internal combustion engine. You might be able to go
Speaker 1: really fast, because I mean, the Tesla Roadster goes really
Speaker 1: fast and it's an electric car. You could in theory
Speaker 1: charge that electric vehicle using solar power. You would just
Speaker 1: not need to drive that car for a while to
Speaker 1: be able to get enough electricity to to charge it
Speaker 1: to a decent amount. Yeah, there's not enough continuous turnover
Speaker 1: of power from the panels themselves to power that kind
Speaker 1: of strength. Actually, you're you're relying specifically on the energy
Speaker 1: stored within the battery, and then you would have to
Speaker 1: use the solar power to to regenerate that energy. But
Speaker 1: also solar panels rely on what we call rare earth elements,
Speaker 1: stuff that appears in trace amounts in certain parts of
Speaker 1: the world, and usually it's it's combined with other stuff.
Speaker 1: So you have to do some pretty um, pretty extreme
Speaker 1: measures to separate the stuff you need from the stuff
Speaker 1: you don't want, like dipping it into acid baths, so
Speaker 1: it melts away all the stuff you don't want and
Speaker 1: you're left with the rare earth elements that are really
Speaker 1: important for creating things like solar panels. These are also
Speaker 1: important for things like wind turbines. This is the ugly
Speaker 1: side of renewable energy, where the production of the stuff
Speaker 1: we use to make those things clean technologies is kind
Speaker 1: of dirty. Yeah, especially if you're not taking extra care
Speaker 1: during the production cycle. So you may have heard that
Speaker 1: a lot of the rare earth elements are being produced
Speaker 1: out of China, and China has something somewhere depending upon
Speaker 1: whom you ask, somewhere between twenty three and thirty seven
Speaker 1: percent of the world's supply of rare earth elements in
Speaker 1: this country, which is which is a good amount. But
Speaker 1: the reason that we get most of that stuff from
Speaker 1: China is because China produces it very cheaply, mostly because
Speaker 1: they don't care about their workers or the environment, although
Speaker 1: that is they're saying that they're changing that, but this
Speaker 1: is where it's going to get really kind of difficult
Speaker 1: and political. So China, while it has maybe somewhere around
Speaker 1: a quarter to maybe a third of the world's supply
Speaker 1: of these rare earth elements, is actually supplying closer to
Speaker 1: of all of the ones that are being used today.
Speaker 1: So I mean, that's a it's enormous. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that, like you said, Lauren, is because they're cheaper
Speaker 1: coming out of China than they are in other places
Speaker 1: in the world. One of the reasons is that China
Speaker 1: has created these huge lakes of pollutants, really uh from
Speaker 1: the mining process. So when they're separating out those rare
Speaker 1: earth elements from everything else you get these very toxic
Speaker 1: pools that are forming and can cause some really serious
Speaker 1: health hazards in the populations around that. And uh, recently,
Speaker 1: like within the last few years, China has been cutting
Speaker 1: back on the number of rare earth elements that allows,
Speaker 1: like the amount that it allows to export from China. Now,
Speaker 1: the official explanation for that is that they want to
Speaker 1: put in more controls to be environmentally conscious, which that's noble.
Speaker 1: We want to see and environmentally conscious approach. And I
Speaker 1: was being a little bit cheeky. I don't think that
Speaker 1: China totally doesn't care about its people are its environment.
Speaker 1: I just think that for for for a while, it
Speaker 1: has been less of a concern than perhaps it should
Speaker 1: have been. Yeah, these are all most not all, I
Speaker 1: will say, most of the minds are state run and
Speaker 1: uh it doesn't look it looks like most of the
Speaker 1: money is going to the state and not to the miners.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, uh, we also have critics
Speaker 1: who say perhaps the official explanation isn't entirely true, that
Speaker 1: that perhaps one of the reasons why China has been
Speaker 1: cutting back on the exportation of rare earth elements is
Speaker 1: really so that it can entice more companies to come
Speaker 1: over to China because if it's not you know, if
Speaker 1: the companies come over and build production facilities, then the
Speaker 1: rare earth elements don't have to be exported. They stay
Speaker 1: within China until they're in the finished product, which then
Speaker 1: gets shipped out. So there's been a lot of political
Speaker 1: maneuvers on both sides, and I don't know that anyone
Speaker 1: is completely you know, all the cards are on the
Speaker 1: table on this issue. So it's complicated and it's messy.
Speaker 1: And so we were starting to see some rare earth
Speaker 1: elements start to get a little less expensive to produce
Speaker 1: in other places, so it may turn out that that, uh,
Speaker 1: it gets balanced in some other way. Um, we have
Speaker 1: seen people stop demanding their electronics, so we still kind
Speaker 1: of need these things. And it is one of those
Speaker 1: little black marks against not a little black market, is
Speaker 1: a black mark against renewable energy, just because we have
Speaker 1: to have these these components to make the stuff to
Speaker 1: get that renewable energy, that that clean electricity that we want,
Speaker 1: right and when that clean electricity is also causing you know,
Speaker 1: like sulfuric acid vapor in the local air and radioactive
Speaker 1: thorium in the water. Yes, we we should all be
Speaker 1: concerned about that. Now that all being said, you know,
Speaker 1: these are things that we can address. These are things
Speaker 1: that we can look to and and make changes and
Speaker 1: make sure that we're getting these rare earth elements in
Speaker 1: a responsible way that isn't environmentally damaging or or hurting populations.
Speaker 1: We can do that. That's completely something that's within our control,
Speaker 1: once the people who are in charge of it decide
Speaker 1: that's something to do. So I'm optimistic that we're going
Speaker 1: to get past this current state of affairs and move
Speaker 1: toward a more responsible way of producing these rare earth elements.
Speaker 1: So that part, even though it's currently a negative, I
Speaker 1: think will eventually, given the right the right motivation, go away.
Speaker 1: So that's that's one negative that we can say, all right,
Speaker 1: this is something we can fix, right, this is something
Speaker 1: we can take care of. There are other ones that
Speaker 1: we can't, like the whole idea when the sun is
Speaker 1: not out, you're not generating electricity. We can't really fix that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like unless we are actually putting
Speaker 1: solar panels outside the stratosphere, but then we're not really
Speaker 1: using it for vehicles anymore. So unless you're beaming it
Speaker 1: to the vehicles. More non existent technology, you can be
Speaker 1: beaming it to the power grid and then the vehicles
Speaker 1: plug into the power grid and the electric vehicles take
Speaker 1: you where you need to go. Well, yeah, it's all so.
Speaker 1: There's also the idea of power density on these solar vehicles,
Speaker 1: the idea of you need to have enough panels there
Speaker 1: to generate the electricity you need to do whatever it
Speaker 1: is those those panels are meant to do. So let's
Speaker 1: say we've got a pure solar powered car. There's no
Speaker 1: real battery that like, if there's there's maybe a battery
Speaker 1: there to run some auxiliary systems, but the main drive
Speaker 1: here is just from solar power. You would have to
Speaker 1: have lots of panels coding the exterior of this car,
Speaker 1: and it might not look too car like. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: you need to think about there are some really kind
Speaker 1: of basic practical limitations you have when you're designing a car.
Speaker 1: One of the things is you can't give it like
Speaker 1: a five hundred meter square flat area on the top.
Speaker 1: You know, it needs to fit in a lane and
Speaker 1: drive on the road, assuming that you're ever going to
Speaker 1: make this street legal. Yet, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of the cars we're going to talk about are not
Speaker 1: necessarily street legal. It's more a kind of a concept
Speaker 1: car in a way. They work, but they're not meant
Speaker 1: to be, you know, driving there right next to other vehicles. Right.
Speaker 1: But then also you have those same concerns cutting into
Speaker 1: things that are going to matter for any car that
Speaker 1: needs to go, like weight and aerodynamic stability. If you've
Speaker 1: got huge flat surfaces on the car that are supposed
Speaker 1: to be facing the sun at all times for you know,
Speaker 1: the maximum absorption of the solar energy, that's probably going
Speaker 1: to cut into your car's aerodynamic design. Yeah, usually you
Speaker 1: see these kind of almost wing like vehicles. There are
Speaker 1: some that are more curvy and they look kind of
Speaker 1: like airplanes on the ground. There are a lot that
Speaker 1: look like that, particularly the ones that are meant for racing.
Speaker 1: You also start having to worry about heat sync. I mean,
Speaker 1: because the purpose of these things is too is to
Speaker 1: draw in heat energy from the sun, and if you're
Speaker 1: using that to carry something that people are are sitting in,
Speaker 1: it gets a little toasting. It can get toasting. I
Speaker 1: would imagine also if you were trying to make this
Speaker 1: available to the consumer and attractive in a commercial marketplace,
Speaker 1: safety might be a concern because if you're you're trying
Speaker 1: to design a car that would be powered by solar panels,
Speaker 1: it needs to be very very light. And when you
Speaker 1: design a car that's that light, people start having concerns
Speaker 1: about how does it stand up on impact well, and
Speaker 1: and to be fair, I mean you might as well
Speaker 1: go ahead and get this out of the way. Solar
Speaker 1: powered vehicles are not going to be something that's in
Speaker 1: the consumer realm. That's it's not meant to be in
Speaker 1: the consumer realm. But they have an important place and
Speaker 1: we'll discuss that, but certainly not any time in the
Speaker 1: very near future. Yeah, I can't. I mean, they might
Speaker 1: play a role like you might have a Toyota has
Speaker 1: priuses that have solar panels that allow you to help
Speaker 1: power some of the auxiliary systems not necessary and help
Speaker 1: recharge the battery as well. It also powers a little
Speaker 1: fan to help ventilate. Yeah, so it doesn't so you
Speaker 1: don't end up with a car that's a million degrees
Speaker 1: when you try and get inside, which in Atlanta, trust me,
Speaker 1: it happens. So Um, you know, there aren't consumer or
Speaker 1: versions out there, but it's not meant as like a
Speaker 1: fully solar powered vehicle that that I don't think we're
Speaker 1: going to see just because of the limitations we've talked about.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean that it's not important and that
Speaker 1: it won't help in the long run, for it has
Speaker 1: a concept out. But I'll talk about that a little
Speaker 1: bit later on down the line. So let's let's go
Speaker 1: on to some of these solar vehicles. I mean, they
Speaker 1: all One other drawback I guess I should say is
Speaker 1: that solar panels are expensive. And so these these vehicles
Speaker 1: that we've been looking at, most of them are in
Speaker 1: this sort of concept prototype phase. They're meant to be
Speaker 1: a proof of concept, not something that's going to hit
Speaker 1: the consumer market. And so they also tend to be
Speaker 1: incredibly expensive because they're they're using some cutting edge technology
Speaker 1: and and customized engineering for them to work. So first
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about some solar cars. So, like we said,
Speaker 1: these tend to be made out of very lightweight materials
Speaker 1: like fiberglass. Uh, pretty much anything that isn't necessary to
Speaker 1: who make the car go is not going to be
Speaker 1: on that car. Right. The kind of testing, racing concept
Speaker 1: sort of things are usually single passenger vehicles. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: one challenge that I read about where it's for to
Speaker 1: two person vehicles. But for the most part there are
Speaker 1: and that was meant to show us a practicality, like
Speaker 1: the idea of how practical can you make a solar vehicle?
Speaker 1: But for for the lighter your people. When you have
Speaker 1: to ask someone like what do you have for lunch today?
Speaker 1: Because I don't know if we can make it to
Speaker 1: work or not. That's that's that's rough. But um these
Speaker 1: have been around for a few decades though. Back in
Speaker 1: the late seventies and early eighties, a few private citizens
Speaker 1: began building their own experimental vehicles. I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: single issue clearly never meant for the market or anything
Speaker 1: like that or even for this kind of experimental run. UM.
Speaker 1: And then on the commercial end, like we were kind
Speaker 1: of saying a minute ago, there there are some concessions
Speaker 1: to solar energy that are on the market. Indeed, UM
Speaker 1: UH Toyota has has those those optional panels on its Prius,
Speaker 1: Mazda has a couple of things Cadillacs Provocation Nissan's Leaf
Speaker 1: both use UM panels to power its cabin electronics and
Speaker 1: UH and and then like I was saying at four
Speaker 1: debut a concept car with a UM kind of lens,
Speaker 1: like like a lens canopy on top of it that
Speaker 1: says could enable the vehicle to fully charge its batteries
Speaker 1: on a single day of sunlight. Um, that's pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I mean the car itself currently runs
Speaker 1: something like thirty three thirty five thousand dollars and they
Speaker 1: have not put a price tag on this crazy lens
Speaker 1: idea there's yet. But I sit there, I think about, like,
Speaker 1: I've got a backpack sitting in the office right now
Speaker 1: that has a cellar panel on it, and it has
Speaker 1: a battery pack inside it, and it's meant to help
Speaker 1: you charge your your portable electronics when you're out and about. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: If I want to charge that battery pack, which can
Speaker 1: give me maybe ARGE on a phone, uh, it takes
Speaker 1: twelve hours of constant exposure to sunlight for me to
Speaker 1: get that that battery pack recharged. Your backpack may not
Speaker 1: be cutting edge, no, I know, I know, but I'm
Speaker 1: saying that it is incredible to me. Therefore, that a
Speaker 1: car would be able to potentially recharge its entire battery
Speaker 1: within the course of a single day in sunlight that
Speaker 1: is such a huge leap, it's totally understand Yes, So
Speaker 1: then I wanted to talk about the World Solar Challenge.
Speaker 1: So it's a quote unquote friendly competition between engineering teams. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a lot like those solar challenges where
Speaker 1: people show up with knives and broken bottles. I'm sure
Speaker 1: some trash talking though that goes on and these things,
Speaker 1: although maybe people don't necessarily understand each other because the
Speaker 1: teams do come from all over the world. They meet
Speaker 1: in Australia and the two thousand thirteen course was a
Speaker 1: three thousand kilometer course that's about one eight hundred sixty
Speaker 1: four miles and it stretched from r When, Australia to Adelaide,
Speaker 1: and the cars were allowed to store only five kilowatt
Speaker 1: hours of energy, which is about ten percent of all
Speaker 1: the energy needed to move the car. Now, when you
Speaker 1: say store, does that mean they were only able to
Speaker 1: arrive with that much in their batteries or could only
Speaker 1: store that much total? That that's all they could store
Speaker 1: total in the caacity. Yeah, the battery capacity, who's only
Speaker 1: five hours? Because anything beyond that was considered to be cheating,
Speaker 1: like you had to have the main part of your
Speaker 1: power needed to come from direct solar energy, although you
Speaker 1: could also recapture any kinetic energy like you know, have
Speaker 1: regenerative breaking, that kind of stuff. You could use that
Speaker 1: to help recharge the battery or or otherwise, you know,
Speaker 1: use kinetic energy to help your car go. And UH.
Speaker 1: They they had several different types of challenges. There was
Speaker 1: the the Challenger class, the Cruiser class, and the Adventure class. UH.
Speaker 1: The Challenger class was my was the one that was
Speaker 1: my favorite. It was it involved the teams getting out,
Speaker 1: getting into their cars and then driving from uh, you know,
Speaker 1: from Darwin to Adelaide and every day at five pm
Speaker 1: they had to stop. They were required by the rules
Speaker 1: to stop at five pm wherever they were and camp
Speaker 1: out overnight and then the next day, uh they would
Speaker 1: be allowed to continue the race. So it was one
Speaker 1: where you know, you couldn't just rely on your battery
Speaker 1: to get you a little extra You had to stop
Speaker 1: when everybody else did. And it that to me, it
Speaker 1: was pretty phenomenal. The the the winner was a team
Speaker 1: from the Netherlands, the Solar Car Team, the new On
Speaker 1: Solar Car Team. They made the trip in thirty three hours,
Speaker 1: three minutes their average speed was ninety point seven one
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour or fifty six miles per hour. So
Speaker 1: these are not these are race cars for solar races,
Speaker 1: but they're not necessarily hitting blinding speeds. Although I should
Speaker 1: also add that at least when they first did this race,
Speaker 1: one of the limitations was the hundred and ten kilometer
Speaker 1: per hour speed him that Australia had and they couldn't.
Speaker 1: The teams were like, we we could make something that's
Speaker 1: faster than that, but we're not allowed to. So but yeah,
Speaker 1: I should also say, you know that was average speed
Speaker 1: was fifty six miles per hour, so top speed was
Speaker 1: different from that. It's actually not bad at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean for first solar powered car. Yeah, I would
Speaker 1: have thought, yeah, yeah, when you sit there and you
Speaker 1: think fifty six miles per hour and you never have
Speaker 1: to stop to refuel, but you do have to stop
Speaker 1: when the sun essentially goes down. Um, it's not too bad.
Speaker 1: The United States, they had a team from Stanford the
Speaker 1: Solar Car Project that came in fourth place. There were
Speaker 1: several other teams from Japan, Australia, the Netherlands, another one
Speaker 1: from the United States as well. The University of Michigan
Speaker 1: had a car in this race. Very interesting stuff. They
Speaker 1: the other classes were not really focused on speed primarily.
Speaker 1: The Cruiser class was really on the practicality. This was
Speaker 1: the one where you had a driver and passenger as
Speaker 1: part of the package, like you had to have of
Speaker 1: two people being transported in these cars, and they were
Speaker 1: given scores based upon not just the speed, but the
Speaker 1: energy efficiency and the actual practicality of it as a vehicle.
Speaker 1: So there's some subjectivity to that score because there's like
Speaker 1: a panel of judges who had decided what was practical
Speaker 1: versus not practical, And I don't know what their criteria
Speaker 1: were for that, but I thought that was interesting. And
Speaker 1: then they had the Adventure class, which was a a
Speaker 1: race that allowed former competitors people or or research teams
Speaker 1: that had put in a car in previous races UH
Speaker 1: to man a brand new team of drivers and operators
Speaker 1: UH and then go through the race just for fun.
Speaker 1: They had already they had already participated once, so this
Speaker 1: was not like they weren't eligible for the Challenger Crew
Speaker 1: class race. But if they wanted to re erase a
Speaker 1: car they had already fielded once, perhaps they made improvements.
Speaker 1: Some of these cars don't make it all the way
Speaker 1: through and end up the trailer. Their cars, they have
Speaker 1: to put them in the back of a trailer. So
Speaker 1: there could be some matter of pride for some teams
Speaker 1: who say we've made some improvements and this time we're
Speaker 1: going to make the whole thing. They would go in
Speaker 1: the Adventure class. So that's kind of neat and it's
Speaker 1: BIENNI also the next one will be There are a
Speaker 1: few other races like this around the world. There's one
Speaker 1: in the US and Canada called appropriately the American Solar Challenge,
Speaker 1: and one in South America called the Atacomma Solar Challenge
Speaker 1: because it takes place in the Atacama Desert. Um. There's
Speaker 1: also a Formula Son uh Formula Son Grand Prix Track Eventum,
Speaker 1: which is more focused on that speed and handling kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And uh, can I tell you guys, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to write it in the notes because I
Speaker 1: felt like you, Jonathan especially would very much appreciate this hit.
Speaker 1: Can Can you imagine what this type of thing is called.
Speaker 1: It's called solar racing, ray racing. Nice. Nice, that's one
Speaker 1: of those that works better in print. Excellent. It Uh.
Speaker 1: There are also busses that rely on solar power, which
Speaker 1: you might that might surprise you because you're thinking, all right,
Speaker 1: these these cars we're talking about, these concept cars are
Speaker 1: made out of the super lightweight material. They can hold
Speaker 1: maybe one or two people. They can't go very fast.
Speaker 1: How would you make that into a bus? Yeah. When
Speaker 1: I think bus, I do not think aerodynamic, nor do
Speaker 1: I think lightweight. Yeah, and in this case, you'd be correct.
Speaker 1: These are not these weird vehicles that couldn't withstand and
Speaker 1: impact or you know, they're not. They're essentially electric buses.
Speaker 1: But you do have lots of surface area on a bus,
Speaker 1: so that's a that's a plus. And some of them
Speaker 1: do have solar panels, although, like you point out, Lauren,
Speaker 1: one of the things you have to consider, there's the
Speaker 1: heat problem. Some of them don't have any solar panels
Speaker 1: on them at all. They are just an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: But they're called solar buses because they're getting their electricity
Speaker 1: from refueling stations. These these you know, quote unquote refueling
Speaker 1: stations that are really solar panel farms. They're stationary units
Speaker 1: that have solar panels that are geared to point towards
Speaker 1: the sun and then they just get the electricity from
Speaker 1: those places. Okay, now that that's not cool. I mean
Speaker 1: that is cool, but that's not really sort of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. It's not a vehicle that uses sunlight
Speaker 1: to directly translate into motion. Yeah, this was this is
Speaker 1: kind of an intermediary step, but it's really making sure
Speaker 1: that the electricity you get is from a clean source
Speaker 1: as opposed to some greenhouse gas emitting type of of
Speaker 1: of fuel sources. Right, I'm not knocking it. I'm just
Speaker 1: talking about how it's not necessarily a solar vehicle better
Speaker 1: than any solar powered bus as I have built this week. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So next we have boats. So, yeah, there are boats
Speaker 1: that use solar power. Most of them tend to be
Speaker 1: used for rivers and canals. They're not most of them are,
Speaker 1: you know, using these these relatively calm waterways, because again,
Speaker 1: you're not generating a lot of power. You have to
Speaker 1: have a lot of surface area to generate enough power
Speaker 1: to move anything that's of a significant size. So for
Speaker 1: some reason, the boat seems more reasonable as a solar
Speaker 1: powered vehicle to me that a car does. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: just because people aren't really used to boats going all
Speaker 1: that fast. Well, it all depend yeah, I mean if
Speaker 1: you know, obviously never been on a cigarette speedboat, but
Speaker 1: uh yeah, there's some that that go really fast, but
Speaker 1: not these and a lot of them are also hybrids
Speaker 1: in that they're using sales as well, so you get
Speaker 1: wind power and solar power, so still getting lots of
Speaker 1: of renewable energy that's not emitting any greenhouse gases in
Speaker 1: the in the mix. But there are some concept boats
Speaker 1: actually they've been built, they're beyond concepts, uh, that can
Speaker 1: traverse oceans. The first one that I could find was
Speaker 1: called Sun twenty one and is a fourteen meter or
Speaker 1: forty six ft long catamaran and in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: it's sailed from Seville, Spain to Miami, Florida, and then
Speaker 1: it's sailed from Miami to New York. So that's pretty
Speaker 1: impressive for a solar powered vehicle. And then you have
Speaker 1: the and I'm gonna I apologize ahead of time. I'm
Speaker 1: going to end up mispronouncing this name because uh, there
Speaker 1: are all sorts of oomlouts and stuff in this that
Speaker 1: I don't know how to pronounce. But the Turinure Planet
Speaker 1: Solar is also another solar powered catamaran yacht. That one's
Speaker 1: thirty meters long, which is ninety eight feet, and it's
Speaker 1: fifteen point two meters wide, so it's fifty feet wide.
Speaker 1: This thing looks like kind of the boat version of
Speaker 1: those solar cars. There's no sail, it's just a big
Speaker 1: flat solar panel. If you were on the water level
Speaker 1: and looking at this thing, you would see this incredible
Speaker 1: catamaran yacht thing. It looks amazing and it looks like
Speaker 1: it has like a wing span that stretches out over it.
Speaker 1: From above you just see like this big flat solar
Speaker 1: panel that's vaguely boat shaped. UM. But yeah, it only
Speaker 1: used solar power to to uh, to propel itself, so
Speaker 1: that was pretty phenomenal. UM. And it did a full
Speaker 1: circumnavigation of the globe in two thousand twelve. This makes
Speaker 1: me wonder, and I don't know answer, what is the
Speaker 1: most efficient way to propel a craft through water? I mean,
Speaker 1: is it? Is it propellers or is it jets or
Speaker 1: skip I get someone big enough to give a good
Speaker 1: flick of the wrist. See, Actually, the most efficient way
Speaker 1: of propelling through water, I would say you would have
Speaker 1: to limit your surface area contact with the water, So
Speaker 1: a catamaran something that has those almost like skis, So
Speaker 1: you're you're limiting as much of the craft as possible
Speaker 1: in contact with the water to reduce drag, and then
Speaker 1: you have to have some form of thrust to make
Speaker 1: you go forward. So the thrust the frust part would
Speaker 1: I mean really doesn't matter. I guess you could put
Speaker 1: a jet on one and if you really wanted to.
Speaker 1: But I think that we're going somewhere with this giant
Speaker 1: powered vehicle motion. I think I think we just build
Speaker 1: a gigantic right arm complete with wrist and hand. Someone
Speaker 1: someone get Terry gilliam on this, put the craft in it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then just just do skip it right across the Atlantic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So solar boats, this is this is one of those
Speaker 1: applications where, because of the nature of travel, you can
Speaker 1: understand it being a viable option. This could be something
Speaker 1: that you could see in consumer boats. Enough. When I
Speaker 1: say consumer boats, I'm talking about people who make more
Speaker 1: money than I do, who can afford a boat and
Speaker 1: maintain a boat, etcetera, etcetera. But it would allow you
Speaker 1: to do things like maybe power all the electronics on
Speaker 1: board the boat. Um, and whether or not it was
Speaker 1: using a motor or sales or a combination. You know
Speaker 1: that that would be something else. Solar also seems perhaps
Speaker 1: well suited to boats, just because of the idea that well,
Speaker 1: you're out on the water, that might be one problem
Speaker 1: with the car. So you want to have your car
Speaker 1: collecting solar energy while it's dormant, while you're not driving it. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of people park in a parking garage or
Speaker 1: under a carboard, or in a garage, or under trees,
Speaker 1: just places where there's not going to be a lot
Speaker 1: of sunlight. There are trees on the surface of water, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: If you're out on the open water, you've got full sunlight,
Speaker 1: there's yeah, yeah exactly. So definitely one of the the
Speaker 1: ways we would easily imagine solar power being put to use.
Speaker 1: One that might not be so easy to imagine is
Speaker 1: a solar powered airplane, which is it is just amazing
Speaker 1: to me that such a thing exists. It is because
Speaker 1: you think about everything you need to make an aircraft fly,
Speaker 1: and you think about the amount of power that your
Speaker 1: typical commercial and military aircraft possess, and it's it's a
Speaker 1: huge amount of power. I mean it's enormous. It's it's
Speaker 1: mind boggling, really and to sit there and think, hey,
Speaker 1: could we make something that is able to generate enough
Speaker 1: power just from the electricity these solar panels are gathering
Speaker 1: to make a vehicle fly. I think a few years
Speaker 1: ago you would have had engineers just say this is
Speaker 1: not this isn't possible. But over the last several years,
Speaker 1: engineers have done the impossible. They've managed to make these.
Speaker 1: Now in some cases we're talking about unmanned vehicles, they're
Speaker 1: not all piloted by people, and in fact, unmanned aerial
Speaker 1: vehicles I think is one of the the areas where
Speaker 1: we'll see this this kind of technology be put to
Speaker 1: greater use, not just in proof of concept or engineering challenges,
Speaker 1: but in actual uh U a V s. I think
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna go to percolate really well over the
Speaker 1: next few years in U A v's just because it
Speaker 1: is such a weight issue of bringing fuel up on
Speaker 1: something that you want to be buzzing around for a
Speaker 1: good minute. Well, yeah, if you want to use something
Speaker 1: for reconnaissance, then you what the what you don't want
Speaker 1: to hear is just as you are getting an idea
Speaker 1: of whatever it is you're trying to to, you know,
Speaker 1: get a good look at once you're starting to get
Speaker 1: that look you don't want to hear, Hey, we have
Speaker 1: to fly it back because the batteries are dying, or
Speaker 1: you know, if it's running on some other kind of
Speaker 1: fuel that the fuels running out, we have to move
Speaker 1: it back or else it's not going to be able
Speaker 1: to fly anymore. If you have a vehicle that can
Speaker 1: recharge batteries on on the go or even generate enough
Speaker 1: electricity to fly just from the solar panels alone, which
Speaker 1: would be a big challenge. Not all U a v
Speaker 1: s are small. I mean we're used to the ones
Speaker 1: that are in the consumer level where it's a little
Speaker 1: the Parrot a R drones, even those are are you know,
Speaker 1: they're bigger than some of the teeny tiny ones, but
Speaker 1: they're still not that big. Some of the military ones
Speaker 1: are enormous, like the size of a small jet, so
Speaker 1: then you have a lot more surface area to cover.
Speaker 1: But you know, for the smaller drones that's an issue.
Speaker 1: But then we've got actual some some great examples as
Speaker 1: some of these look really funky, and it's not a
Speaker 1: huge surprise because in order of you to get that
Speaker 1: amount of lift and be able to maintain flight kind
Speaker 1: of make some engineering decisions. You know, once again we
Speaker 1: get to a point where anything that is not necessary
Speaker 1: for flight you leave off the plane. A lot of
Speaker 1: these have have gear that will allow it to roll
Speaker 1: and then take off and then drops off the plane.
Speaker 1: And then the way you land the plane is you
Speaker 1: crash the plane. That's not a joke. That's actually built
Speaker 1: into a lot of these solar powered planes because you
Speaker 1: don't want that weight of that landing gear to be
Speaker 1: another consideration, Okay, people have people have different priorities than well.
Speaker 1: To be fair, these these planes are not traveling at
Speaker 1: speeds that you are used to. These planes like like
Speaker 1: one of the ones we're going to talk about is
Speaker 1: goes to a nice leisurely pace. As far as planes
Speaker 1: are concerned, You're I'm just thinking about destroying the expensive
Speaker 1: equipment are potentially destroying. I mean, I'm sure that maybe
Speaker 1: there's like a water touchdown involved kind of yeah, scild
Speaker 1: of mattresses, right, well, I would think catcher's glove. If
Speaker 1: you're talking about solar powered unmanned aerial vehicles, one of
Speaker 1: the top goals it would seem like would be to
Speaker 1: have a vehicle that didn't have to land, like that
Speaker 1: could sustain itself in the air. I don't know how feasible.
Speaker 1: I mean, even when you're in the sky, you have
Speaker 1: to deal with clouds because I would bet vehicles that
Speaker 1: are powered by solar have some altitude limitations. But if
Speaker 1: you could get above the clouds, I mean, that would
Speaker 1: be a sure a really cool thing. I mean, and
Speaker 1: we have examples of things like spy balloons that have
Speaker 1: solar panels on the board down Google's project. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go. And that's another one that's not even a
Speaker 1: spy thing. That's that's delivering WiFi via balloons that are
Speaker 1: floating above the clouds. Not a spy thing that we
Speaker 1: know of. Google. Yah, my favorite. We've told the story
Speaker 1: a couple of times, but I just love how Google
Speaker 1: showed up at this Australian couple like Google in black. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They're like, it was New Zealand. Was it was New Zealand,
Speaker 1: You're right, this New Zealand couple's home and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to put this on top of your house.
Speaker 1: We can't tell you what it's for. And they said okay.
Speaker 1: Turned out it was WiFi, and they came back and said,
Speaker 1: you have WiFi. Congrats, Do we have anything else? We're
Speaker 1: never going to time to make Facebook accounts for your sheep.
Speaker 1: So I thought, I thought it'd be fun to dis
Speaker 1: ribe one of these unmanned aerial vehicles and explain how
Speaker 1: how weird it looks compared to classic aircraft. So NASA
Speaker 1: has one called the Helios Plane, and it's got a
Speaker 1: wingspan of seventy five meters, which is two hundred forty
Speaker 1: seven feet, so it's two or four seven feet wide.
Speaker 1: This is a common theme you'll see in these solar
Speaker 1: powered aircraft. Yeah, they have these huge wingspans for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: One of the big ones is that you need enough
Speaker 1: land space there to put all the solar panels down
Speaker 1: just to generate the electricity you need. But body length
Speaker 1: is only three point seven meters or twelve feet, So
Speaker 1: it's two hundred forty seven ft wide and twelve feet long. Okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, thing looks a little weird. You just kind
Speaker 1: of assume it's sideways. Yeah, you're like, like, wow, why
Speaker 1: are the wings so stubby? No, that's the body of
Speaker 1: the aircraft. What. Yeah, So these if you want to
Speaker 1: compare that to a seven forty seven. Uh, the seven
Speaker 1: forty seven has a wingspan of sixty four point three eaters,
Speaker 1: which is two hundred eleven feet, So the Helios plane
Speaker 1: has a wider wing span than a seven forty seven does.
Speaker 1: If you had these two side by side, the Helios
Speaker 1: would look much wider, but it's also much shorter. It's
Speaker 1: also very very lightweight. It weighs nine ms, which is
Speaker 1: two thousand, forty eight pounds, whereas the seven forty seven
Speaker 1: that's fully loaded as in like passengers and luggage and
Speaker 1: everything champagne service, yeah, can be closer to three ninety
Speaker 1: seven thousand kilograms or eight hundred seventy five thousand pounds.
Speaker 1: So two thousand two compared to a hundred seventy five
Speaker 1: thousand is a pretty big difference, you know. I would
Speaker 1: imagine another good reason for having those long, long wings
Speaker 1: compared to the size of the plane is that it
Speaker 1: generates more left that way, and in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: these solar powered aircraft are very similar to gliders. They
Speaker 1: generate not only are they generating a lot left, but
Speaker 1: they're trying to take advantage of every little bit of
Speaker 1: of wind. They can get. Uh, they aren't always able
Speaker 1: to take off in super windy conditions because really anything
Speaker 1: where you've got winds over ten miles per hour is
Speaker 1: problematic because they just they have these this enormous wingspan
Speaker 1: that can easily be affected by these gusts of wind
Speaker 1: and then you have a disastrous take off. Sure but
Speaker 1: right if if you can avoid having to run your
Speaker 1: engine as often or as uh powerfully as much, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: then you you can take a lot of these, by
Speaker 1: the way, have their propellers um directly wired to the
Speaker 1: solar panels, so they often also have batteries on board.
Speaker 1: It's not like they don't have a battery, but in fact,
Speaker 1: most of the time they have pretty cool batteries that
Speaker 1: are in sheet form, so they're they're like again, because
Speaker 1: you want to conserve space, you don't want it to
Speaker 1: have a concentrate amount of weight right in one part
Speaker 1: of the plane. It distributes the weight and uh and
Speaker 1: makes it so it's not so so bulky. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you're relying as much as you can on
Speaker 1: the solar power as possible, and then you switch over
Speaker 1: to bad reef or anything else. Um, do you also
Speaker 1: have one A company called kinetic with cues excuse yeah
Speaker 1: instead of case um and make a fast food menu
Speaker 1: item spelling there. There's is called the Zephyr, which is
Speaker 1: a solar powered unmanned aircraft that stayed aloft for two
Speaker 1: weeks straight. So that's the current record holder for solar
Speaker 1: aircraft staying aloft, So two weeks fourteen days of being
Speaker 1: in the air before it landed again. So proof of
Speaker 1: concept of this idea of having something perpetually in the air.
Speaker 1: It was actually so impressive that the Red Hot Chili
Speaker 1: Peppers wrote a terrible song about it. Yeah, and as
Speaker 1: only the Red Hot Chili Peppers can do. Uh, so
Speaker 1: the little commentary from from Jonathan and Joe. Then we
Speaker 1: have the Solar Impulse. This is one that that made
Speaker 1: the news, um, just like a year ago. Uh. The
Speaker 1: Solar Impulse holds the record for the longest manned solar
Speaker 1: powered aircraft light at twenty six hours, ten minutes and
Speaker 1: nineteen seconds. So this one actually has a human pilot.
Speaker 1: This is not a U A V like the other
Speaker 1: ones we've talked about. Uh. And the Solar Impulse, to
Speaker 1: which is not launched yet both literally and figuratively, it
Speaker 1: will do that next year. Uh, it has got an
Speaker 1: incredible goal of circumnavigating the Earth. Now here's where we
Speaker 1: get into that speed thing I was talking about, Lauren.
Speaker 1: So we usually think of airplanes traveling at really fast
Speaker 1: speeds like like five or usually even faster for a
Speaker 1: commercial jet. Right, So the solar impulse too is not
Speaker 1: going to go anywhere near that. The top speed of
Speaker 1: the solar impulse too is actually eight miles per hour.
Speaker 1: Now you're talking about an aircraft going around the entire Earth,
Speaker 1: and they're not going to cheat by going up around
Speaker 1: the north. The top fits um. So you can imagine
Speaker 1: this is going to mean that it's going to go
Speaker 1: days over oceans without stopping. Um and kind of scary.
Speaker 1: And you think this is a manned vehicle. It's actually
Speaker 1: designed for two people to a pilot and a co pilot. Uh.
Speaker 1: The chairs are very special on board this aircraft because
Speaker 1: they absorb the heat from your butt and turn that
Speaker 1: into usable energy. Sadly no, but what they do do
Speaker 1: and do do is a great worry putting it. So
Speaker 1: the chairs are not just chairs, they're also caughts and
Speaker 1: they're also toilets because they don't they can't build all
Speaker 1: this extra stuff in the plane. They have to conserve
Speaker 1: as much weight as they possibly can. Why hasn't the
Speaker 1: chair slash caught slash toilet caught on in a domestic way.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. The chairs at
Speaker 1: my house. You guys want to come over anyway, don't
Speaker 1: at all? Really, any chair can be a toilet. You
Speaker 1: just get an exact o knife and and willpower is
Speaker 1: what it takes, and then that's it. Also, I really
Speaker 1: want to say that I think that if we combine
Speaker 1: Joe's but heat energy uh source idea with the giant idea,
Speaker 1: if we can get giants and harness their butt heat.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I've always heard that giants just have
Speaker 1: cold tushes, But I mean I'm not I'm not read
Speaker 1: up on the lore, so I could be wrong. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So this, this circumnavigating the globe to get back to
Speaker 1: the actual story here will probably take around five months
Speaker 1: to get to get all the way around the earth
Speaker 1: um and the Just in case you're wondering, like, well,
Speaker 1: what else is going to be aboard the plane in
Speaker 1: case of disaster, they will have a survival kit and
Speaker 1: a life raft. I hope they've got somebody keeping track
Speaker 1: of them. Well, I'm sure they'll have that too, But
Speaker 1: I mean there, you know, when it comes to the
Speaker 1: stuff that's actually on the plane you're talking about, you
Speaker 1: know again you want the minimum amout stuff because you
Speaker 1: want to conserve as much a weight as you can. Then. Uh,
Speaker 1: there there are other examples of you A V S
Speaker 1: that we could talk about. Most of them are are
Speaker 1: have you know, potential military applications. But really I want
Speaker 1: to kind of transition into just a discussion about where
Speaker 1: do we benefit from these sort of of solar powered vehicles.
Speaker 1: Most of the ones we've talked about here with maybe
Speaker 1: you know, some consumer cars are an exception, and some
Speaker 1: of the boats are an exception, but most of these
Speaker 1: are vehicles that are not meant to have any kind
Speaker 1: of application outside of what they're currently attempting to do,
Speaker 1: like break some records. But we can still benefit from
Speaker 1: this in multiple ways, right. I mean, you you have
Speaker 1: engineers working on building more efficient solar panels, which can
Speaker 1: benefit us in all sorts of applications, not just in
Speaker 1: these concept or or prototype vehicles. Uh. You have engineers
Speaker 1: coming up with new ways to create lightweight material that's
Speaker 1: resilient and can withstand the forces that a vehicle typically encounters.
Speaker 1: Also coming up with new designs for vehicles so that
Speaker 1: they are are as fit efficient as possible. That can
Speaker 1: spill over into more classic vehicles, which means if you
Speaker 1: have a car that's made out of a very sturdy,
Speaker 1: lightweight material and it's really aerodynamic, and it's benefited from
Speaker 1: this research, then you're going to be using less. Whatever
Speaker 1: fuel you actually use, you probably aren't going to be
Speaker 1: using pure solar energy. It's just not really practical. But
Speaker 1: whatever you are using, you won't be wasting a lot
Speaker 1: of it. Sure, this could also drive some battery technology
Speaker 1: if you're combining, if if it's a solar electric hybrid,
Speaker 1: then advancements in batteries could help everyone. So I'm really
Speaker 1: excited by the solar impulse to rite. I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to see how this shapes up and how they they
Speaker 1: are able to make this happen. I fully believe it's
Speaker 1: going to happen, that they're going to be able to
Speaker 1: circumnavigate the globe. It's going to be a true endurance test.
Speaker 1: I mean, I assume they are going to have to
Speaker 1: stop occasionally because you've got to get stuff to eat
Speaker 1: and everything. I think that food. Yeah, that's my question.
Speaker 1: But the fact my question it's always this. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's mine too. But the idea here is really cool,
Speaker 1: this idea of creating an engineering challenge to overcome and
Speaker 1: knowing that while it maybe a while before the rest
Speaker 1: of us see a direct benefit from this technology that's
Speaker 1: coming down the road. No pun intended. Your solar powered cars.
Speaker 1: I would like to go on record and say I
Speaker 1: don't think the idea of a solar powered ground vehicle
Speaker 1: is entirely ludicrous for some certain applications. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can maybe see a future if we have very increased
Speaker 1: efficiency on solar panels, you might have say some kind
Speaker 1: of uh city transit vehicle for single passenger movement between
Speaker 1: point A and point B. Or maybe that that solar
Speaker 1: bus thing really does have a future if we if
Speaker 1: we increase that efficiency and and the materials technology to
Speaker 1: create more lightweight, safer busses. I definitely see solar power,
Speaker 1: even if we never see it as the primary energy
Speaker 1: source for a vehicle. I definitely see it as being
Speaker 1: one of the important ways that we used to generate
Speaker 1: the electricity that charges the batteries on board these electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: or even using solar power to do something else, such
Speaker 1: as to use electrolysis on water and thus generate hydrogen,
Speaker 1: which you would use in a maybe a hydrogen powered car,
Speaker 1: hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. Yeah, I'd say there's no question
Speaker 1: about stuff like that. When it comes to directly powered
Speaker 1: vehicles that have direct solar power, I don't know where
Speaker 1: do you need vehicles that can go at low speed,
Speaker 1: one passenger at a time, at a place where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of sunlights. That's that's tough because I would
Speaker 1: normally say a city, But the problem with cities is
Speaker 1: that you've got lots of buildings, so you don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of direct sunlight. So night Vale, it's always
Speaker 1: night there. Actually, it's not sure that the sun rises
Speaker 1: and sets whenever it wants to in night Vale. Your
Speaker 1: your personal desert transit vehicle, Yeah, whenever you need to
Speaker 1: get out to that one special cactus, right. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you you're not on a super tight schedule to do it.
Speaker 1: But it is, like we said, it is important for
Speaker 1: us to look into these technologies because they will benefit
Speaker 1: us further than the line. So we're gonna wrap this up. Guys,
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for topics you would like us
Speaker 1: to talk about in the future. Maybe there's some future
Speaker 1: technology that has really got you excited and you can't
Speaker 1: believe that we haven't talked about it yet. Well let
Speaker 1: us know. Send us a message. Our email is FW
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