Pic of Volt?

[Dr Mordrid]

A graphic artist took a GM pic of a Volt contour model in a wind tunnel, actual images published of its front end, leaks and info from the GM project managers recent interviews and came up with this.

See something unusual?

[Jammrock]

Solar cells ... interesting. I've been wondering when car makers would start putting those on the roof.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yup. GM has been paying attention to the Volt blogs, which have running feature request threads. The #2 requested item was solar panels on the roof to at least partially charge the car when parked etc.

[mmp121]

Kinda sad though, that GM didn't come up with the idea themselves. I mean it only makes sense. Granted, making em so they don't get damaged by hail or something else probably makes this an engineering challenge, but still, bloggers shouldn't be the reason GM is making this.

[Dr Mordrid]

Actually GM did put forth the idea first, then they decided no for cost savings. After that they did a reader poll and guess what? They wanted it back.

Hail won't likely be a problem save for the worst case scenario: it'll be covered in polycarbonate.

[az]

Wow, this is one very rare example of a recent american car* looking halfway decent.

*= muscle car remakes excluded. Some of those look fantastic.

[Lizzard[MPE]]

did they say how much adds to the cost of the Volt for the solar paneling?

[Dr Mordrid]

Not yet, but one major low cost possibility is already in production; the PowerSheet.

This tech is from Nanosolar, which is estimated to cost about $1/w once all their lines are up to full speed. Nanosolar's panels consist of a thin film printed on a foil substrate using a nanotech ink (copper indium gallium diselenide). That's right: printed.

Most companies only produce solar panels at a rate of 10-30 megawatts/year because of their labor intensive assembly and expensive fabrication, but Nanosolar's single line is already producing at a rate of 1 gigawatt/year - ~100 feet/minute, but they say 1000-2000 ft/min should work in principle.

This single production line tripled the US's solar panel production rate in one swipe. (YouTube video)

Add to the low price their 25 year guarantee on the panels and you have IMO the potential for a paradigm shift.

Needless to say companies are scrambling to get their hands on a Nanosolar panel. As far as capitalization goes, they have gobs of it - more than $100 million and climbing fast.

[KRSESQ]

We are presently already sold out for the next 12 months. We are working hard to scale our production capacity as fast as possible.

Have they gone public yet?

Kevin

[KRSESQ]

Please do not inquire via phone; use email. We read every email we receive and follow up promptly if there is a match. Due to the quantity of inquiries we receive, we're afraid we cannot answer emails for which there is no match.

?A match for what? Phone number and email address?

Kevin

[Dr Mordrid]

Have they gone public yet?

Kevin

Not yet, but an IPO looks to happen later this year or early next.

Their current cap is closing in on $200 million and rumors are that that may hit $2 billioin as more venture cap firms line up.