There Was A Bit Of A Non Event For The Solar Brigade Today,

the MS Turanor PlanetSolar,

crossed the finish line of its trip around the world at the Hercule Harbour in Monaco, why do I say non event? well I look at it this way, forget about solar, if you had used sails the trip time, (it took this boat 20 months), could have been done by a tea clipper in the 1800s in 160 days using just sail,


so why put six huge blocks of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries to keep it going when the sun didn't shine? which leads me on to the same question I ask of battery/hybrid car manufactures, how much is just the cost of the batteries, how long do they last, how much is a new set of batteries and how much does it cost in an environmentally friendly way to depose of the old ones? so far not a single answerer to any of those questions from any car/boat company,


as an aside another small point I have been thinking about, one of the cars that ran on batteries had 18 batteries with 12 cells in each battery, if after say a year or two how easy is it to replace 3 or 4 dud cells? the point being without all of the cells working at 100% every figure regarding performance in speed and distance would be totally incorrect if dud cells were not replaced, solar powered boats and cars? stick to wind or petrol!