Anyone who's seen a cat or dog follow the sun for the warmest snoozing spot will get one of the big ideas behind Ford's C-MAX Solar Energi Concept vehicle. Announced Wednesday night and debuting at the Consumer Electronics Show (starting January 7 in Las Vegas), this first-ever solar-powered hybrid will be able to "creep" back and forth a short distance to get the best exposure for its rooftop collection panels. And those panels will get a powerful assist from a special energy concentrator device.
The C-MAX Solar Energi Concept will feature a rooftop solar panel array developed in partnership with SunPower Corp. of San Jose, Calif. Alone, this array can't do much for the car's battery: "We can get 300W-350W if we put solar on the roof," explained Mike Tinskey, Ford's director of global vehicle electrification and infrastructure, in a briefing with TechHive. "But we really wanted to find a way to fully recharge the batteries using solar."
Ford worked with the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta to develop a concentrator device—basically, a special roof over the parked C-MAX—that intensifies the effect of sunlight on the cells by a factor of eight. The concentrator is a Fresnel lens, a prism-like optics design that was originally developed to increase the intensity of beams emanating from lighthouses. More recently, it's been used for increasing the efficiency of solar energy technology.
Image: Ford
The Ford C-MAX Solar Energi Concept will move back and forth autonomously under the concentrator to track the sun and maximize energy collection.
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