1: The charging stations can be implemented anywhere. We have them on major highways since it allows for electric cars to travel longer distances, as this is a very big issue for them. However, we could also implement them in stationary areas, most notably parking lots. This has the advantage of keeping the cars charging longer, but does not help on a longer trip (such as a travel through route 89).

2/3: Yes. The battery would have to be much larger than is practical to completely charge this many cars. However, that is not what we intend to do. Our system is both spaced out so that there are smaller, more frequent batteries. It also is intended to give a boost of energy to a car for its duration, as opposed to charging it completely. Assuming an electric car takes 12 kWh to charge for 24 hours of use, the battery would be anywhere from 5kg to as low as 1kg per car, using recent battery technology like IBM’s Battery 500, which would have a roll-out time that matches ours. Using more conventional batteries, which we want to avoid, we would be closer to the 5 kg mark. This would cost around $100 per kWh. Although this seems expensive, again, we are only partially charging the cars, using less and reducing this. In terms of area, it would vary based on how large the solar farms are, but we cannot give an exact estimate, we can say with certainty is would be smaller than the size of the charging grids.

1: The important thing isn’t how much time it travels over each grid, it’s the grid frequency. As of right now, the plan is to have the grids cover roughly 1/5 of the road (1/2 mile every 2 miles). It would charge, then, at slightly less than 1/5 of the normal charging rate as if it were charging off of AC or DC power. Although this does not seem like much, it is a huge difference in energy savings and helps with long trips immensely.
2: Yes. They will be fairly light, and while we cannot give an exact estimate, since they are thinly applied on the bottom and are mostly copper, metal, and plastics, they will weigh somewhere in the vicinity of 15-40 kg. This is not significant enough to have a performance impact.

Rather than harm our project, we would work with it. Our charging is limited by the car’s maximum electrical intake. If car batteries and recharge rates were to improve, our project would be even more effective at charging the cars. The only issue is that if cars were to drain faster than our batteries or solar farms could provide, we would have an issue which would have the road need better batteries or more solar panels, but that is hot-swappable so it is not too much of an issue to fix. However, such a situation is not in the foreseeable future.

A fully electric car is, while not necessarily reliant on traditional fuels, almost always using electricity from a coal, natural gas, or at best, nuclear plant. The electric cars that do not rely on electricity from these sources are almost always run from the owner’s own renewable energy, which is often too expensive or impractical for most to adopt. I would advise you to look at this for more info: http://www.afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric_em...

As for SolCharge getting around the need to use traditional fuels during production, transportation, and installation, we would not ever be able to eliminate that completely. However, there are two things in consideration. First, we would build SolCharge with recycled materials to avoid production issues on one front. Second, SolCharge ends up making up in energy and fuel expenditure with the energy it generates on the road.

Putting them everywhere would be, as you said, a huge expense. We are only planning to place them on major highways for about 1/5 of the road (1/2 mile every 2 miles). This helps with price.

Installation would be done in 3 steps fairly quickly. First, The solar farms would be placed on the side of the road. We would then dig trenches on the sides to store the batteries in, and wire them to the solar farms. This would be done without the need to stop the highway. The next step is tricky. We would lay the charging grids down as fast as possible and then wire. On sparse highways, this is doable without shutting down the highway. However, on busier highways, we would require a brief (<1 hour) shutdown to place the charging grids and ensure security. This would require a detour, and would be done in chunks to ensure traffic could flow.

This would simply be an augment to electric cars, raising the price over a typical electric by roughly a couple hundred at most.

Selling factors are the obvious environmental benefits, but also the immense amounts saved on gas and power, which in the long run will end up saving them money.

If I were to purchase this car would I have to rely entirely on charging it on the road? What happens if I own one of these cars but I’m driving on a highway without SolCharge? Is there an alternative charging method?

No, not at all. SolCharge is simply an augment to electric or hybrid cars, which means you can still charge them offroad however you would charge them normally.

Okay, thank you for clarifying. I really like this concept. Good luck in the competition!

Cost varies by the size of the solar farms, how far spaced apart the charging grids are, and the battery size, which vary based on the road activity. However, we can give you a breakdown by part. As a background, we plan to place the grids (mostly) for 1/2 mile every 2 miles.

The solar farms are going to be purchased in industrial quantities, which would be around $0.70/W (plus maintenance), or $700/kW. The batteries would cost around $100 per kWh, and we would have between a dozen to multiple dozen kWh (varies strongly). As for the changing grids, we do not yet have a definite estimate.

One should keep in mind the money that is saved in energy costs by our idea when looking at our project.