Imagine The Walking Dead started in 50 years from now. The way things are going now, picture this scenario:
>A survivor is walking down a lonesome road.
>They arive at a small resort and there’s a car covered in dust and dirt in the parking lot.
>They approach the car and check whether it still has some bio fuel left in the tank.
>Still plenty.
>They look around spotting a decayed body close by.
>They search the body and are lucky to find a ‘keyless’ key belonging to the car.
>There are no door handles and the battery inside the key corroded away.
>They break the glass and open the door from the inside.
>Finally inside, there’s still no way to start the engine without the key.
>They have an idea.
>The digital wrist watch on the body should have the same battery as the key.
>After a bit of tinkering with some tools they get the key working again.
>They press the ignition button.
>The displays light up but the engine remains quiet.
>The displays show error messages:
ERROR CODE: ND47089
Tire pressure sensor subscription expired
Please schuedule service or enter payment information
Engine start failed
>MFW
You would need a lot of panels and days of time to charge to any significant amount of distance. If you set up a solar farm in one location you could use the car for short, regular trips.
You wouldn’t be able to take the panels with you on trips without stopping for several days at a time before traveling another dozen miles or so. Electric vehicles really do pull a massive amount of energy compared to solar cells that the vehicle could haul around.
I think you overestimate the necessity to move long distances in an apocalyptic setting once things have settled. 10miles is actually quite a long distance to move yourself and all your stuff in a day. And since you aren’t expected in the office at 9am, it does not really matter if it takes you 1 hour or 10 days to move somewhere.
10 miles is about 1 hour’s bike ride or 2-3 hours of walking. There’s a reason rural America has a town every 20 miles or so, that’s about half a day’s travel by foot, or one can feasibly go to the next town, do something that takes a while and return back by horse or bike within a day
Once you settle down it isn’t important, but unless you happen to be lucky enough that an urban setting is a good location for a post apocalyptic residence then moving a sizeable distance is a likely need. Any rural area will require moving a few hundred miles at least, and if you can’t take the vehicle with you then it doesn’t serve much of a purpose.
Depends on why things are post apocalyptic of course.
200 watt/panel. 10 panels. 10 hours of charging. 0.2 kW x 10 x 10h = 20 kWh.
Bad mileage because of conductions, so 20 kWh / 100 km.
That means every 10 panels gets you about 100 km / 60 miles per day.
That’s just very rough based on a lot of debatable assumptions of course.