With the battery safety thing, making sure they won't over heat under heavy load is important of course, but the thing that's always worried me is what happens in a car crash? Do they catch fire once punctured like the lipo's we use can?
I would like to see some decent electric cars around, and wouldn't mind trying to make one my self if it wasn't for the battery cost, cycle life and safety (might get batteries that solve 2 of those problems, but not all 3 at once, not yet)
Does anyone now what the average power draw of a medium size car, being driven at normally is? I see cars with big roofs that in the sun most of the day while people are at work and wonder what a solar panel sitting on top would be like (vans are good, lots of roof space, plus the roof is high enough no one has to look at the solar panel
). Drive ~30minutes to work, let the solar panel recharge the battery during the day, then drive ~30 minutes home again. If the panel can charge 1 hours driving during the day you'd almost never have to plug into anything, and it would hardly cost anything to run.