Nissan to use solar chargers to keep batteries charged up
While solar-powered cars have a long road ahead of them before there is any real chance that our daily driven vehicles will be powered by nothing more than the sun (not counting large arrays powering a single electric car), a small smattering of solar cells hooked up to a car battery is enough to keep the ancient lead-acid lump charged up. Some dealerships have chosen to purchase these small solar chargers individually, and now it appears as if Nissan as a whole will be doing just that for dealerships carrying its vehicles. All North American and European Nissans will be equipped with solar chargers from ICP Solar, as the two companies announced recently.Tom Clark, Nissan's vice president of sales for the Americas said, "With the new generation of cars including more and more electronics embedded such as GPS navigation systems, DVD player, cruise control, hands-free cell phones, and voice activation, the battery drain on new cars will become more of an issue for major automotive manufacturers and car dealers." Considering how long Nissan's Titan truck is sitting unsold -- the company has an almost unbelievable 489 day supply -- perhaps this wasn't a difficult decision to make.
[Source: CNET]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brent 1:47PM (7/24/2008)
It sure would be a lot easier to make less vehicles that don't sell very well. :)
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TDI_Nick 2:29PM (7/24/2008)
But Titan can run e85 which is cheaper than gasoline.
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http:www.llamamoney.com 3:50PM (7/24/2008)
TDI_Nick:
And if you decide to (foolishly) drop E85 in your tank, you will be rewarded with mileage ~20% less than regular old dinosaur juice. So much for the savings.
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why not the LS2LS7? 10:38PM (7/24/2008)
VW has done this for almost 10 years.
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vfx 4:59PM (7/25/2008)
The VW ones are all over Ebay. I have bought them cheap for friends and relatives with ICE toys.
Mike 7:38AM (7/26/2008)
It would be nice if the solar also acted to power an air exchange system with outside air based on ambient temperature.
For the masses this means no more getting into an extremely warm and uncomfortable car during the summer months.
And, for fare too many pets, infants and even elderly people each year - it could mean being spared a horrible death at the hands of their unthinking caretakers.
- mike
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