By Edward Niedermeyer
May 14, 2008 -
You know BMW is serious about improving efficiency when you hear they're equipping the M5 with a stop-start system. But what else have the bayerische wissenschaftlers been cooking up to improve efficiency? Auto Motor und Sport brings us up-to-date on the innovations unveiled by BMW at its unimaginatively named "Innovation Day 2008." One concept that's sure to have green chins wagging: solar roof panels designed to run the cars' electrical systems. BMW estimates a square meter of roofspace in northern European conditions could deliver 200 watts; more still if the entire roof's covered in photovoltaic cells. Solar panel could be used to reduce dependence on efficiency-sapping alternators for on-board systems, which could deliver small improvements to efficiency (0.3 fewer liters per 100km driven) or pre-heat the engine and fluids, improving inefficient cold start fuel consumption. Bimmer's boffins are also looking at generating electricity from excess engine heat. BMW claims that current thermodynamic generators from aerospace applications could deliver 200 watts of electricity today, with up to 1k watts available next Thursday (or so). The combination of thermodynamic generators, solar panels and engine pre-heating could yield a five percent increase in efficiency. We'll wait until we see a cost - benefit analysis, but the propeller people deserve credit where CAFE credit's due.
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May 14th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Check out a company called konarka (they are building plastic based solar panels that you can literally print onto any surface to produce solar cells). Very interesting company.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Konarka looks like a new break through, as the present Photo cells are pretty expensive, one dealer told me the hydro costs had to go up quite a bt before we can afford photo cells.
Anythng can help.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
No, the hydro costs don’t have to go up, because hydropower is very limited in availability. If there were a lot of hydro available in New England I’d be paying several cents per kwh instead of 16-18c/kwh.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Doesn’t matter what you suggest, the NIMBYs don’t want it. They’ll probably discover if you ate several pounds of those printable cells every day, you’d die in a matter of mere decades.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
chuckR:
very nice!
May 14th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
@chuckR:
Too true. Cars, skyscrapers, skateboard, bicycles, and all kinds of things, if they didn’t exist already, would never get built today.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Sounds like something that would be best suited to a hybrid application, where the panels could charge the batteries whenever it’s in the sun.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Next we are going to see wind turbines inside the grills of cars that power the electronic devices.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
So what happened to the BMW “Turbosteamer” from 2005? This was a gasoline-steam hybrid. It used heat exchangers to capture (otherwise wasted) heat energy from the engine exhaust and used this to drive a steam engine. It sounded like their prototype was quite successful.
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4936/
May 14th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
@BlueEr03: Smokey Yunick tried that years ago as an alternative to running an alternator on race cars…. It was banned from competition.