The Sun Rays on the car

Unless you are staying in a late 90s HDB flat, chances are your vehicle will be be park in an open air car park. No one drive more than 2 hours a day and so for most the day, the car will be bathing in the everlasting summer sun of Singapore. The summer of Dallas is even worst! Without the use of proper sun shade and reflector, you will be in for a scorching surprise when you lay your hands on those steering wheel.

Since car will be expose to the sun shine most of the time, be it driving, stopping at traffic light and in the parking lot, most driver will install solar film to reduce the amount of UV entering the vehicle, reducing the interior temperature and also give the air conditioning system a break. I don't know about the correlation of fuel consumption and temperature of the day but its common for driver to blast the air condition to the max to cool down the vehicle, ensuring a comfortable ride. I vividly remember my dad doing so all the time when we got into his old Honda Civic. Nowadays people put Sun shade in front, at the side and some time at the back...wrapping up the whole car as though some Monkey show is happening inside.

That limitless amount of sun energy in light and heat. Why not use our car as a solar energy harvester? Since it gonna be in the sun the whole day, might as well make the car go greener by installing solar panel on the roof or maybe just the dashboard to harvest the sun energy on the go (or when parking).

SOLAR PANEL ON TOP OF TOYOTA PRIUS

Toyota seems to had come up with the concept of a Solar Roof to power the Hybrid. Still a concept car thought but this could clearly be the future of green energy on the road. Maybe for a starter, we should explore installing Solar Panel on the dashboard, an area that is receiving alot of sun ray and thus an area prone to heat induced crack as evident in my former Mitsubishi Eclipse that comes with plastic dashboard. Those power harnessed could easily be use to charge your mobile phone, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS Lite, IPOD, may the car battery, provide power to the dome light, PDA or maybe charge a small laptop. Imagine the among of money save in long run especially in times of the high oil price that are fueling higher home electricity bill?

For the less, put some Solar Toys on the dashboard to take the stresses of the day away.