Solar Roof - why not make it Impossibly Hard ?

  Give an engineer unlimited CAD time, and designing a simple knife will end up in re-inventing a 12 blade Swiss Army monster... It goes like this:

  • Initial goal: as much solar power as possible. Done !

  3 months later:

  • shall pivot to optimize solar output in Canadian winters
  • shall slide down along the passenger side to lower wind resistance
  • woooh, let's also include a Party deck !
  • shall have storage boxes for spare wheel and large outdoor gear
  • throw in a hidden awning while you're at it
  • and of course it shall meet the project's semi-stealth goals...

  The anti Elon's 5-steps-design-principles monstrosity was thus born..

  It does make use of the whole roof area:

  It does sport a party deck 🥂  By sliding the 2 rear panels forward, and via a skylight in the ceiling:


  It pivots and slides down so as not to transform the whole van into a gigantic shaker when the wind blows 😱


  And it does include a hidden awning, storage boxes, and will be hidden behind an all-around plastic siding to conceal it from the street:

  So there, anything is possible in CAD ! 💪

  Now, maybe it'll weigh a ton and tip the van, or the pivot / slide thingy will be beyond my fab skills, or the panel rack will come down crashing on the floor... It might even take $10B and 30 years to build, rivalring the James Webb Space Telescope 😍

  More likely though, I'll end up throwing it all out and just glueing down the PV panels... 😂

 
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