GM crafting cars from Spanish sun

The rain in Spain may fall mainly on the plain, but the summer sun drenches the entire country nearly every day. General Motors intends to make the most of it, covering the roof of its largest manufacturing plant in Europe with 85,000 solar panels, a whopping 2,000,000 square feet of them. That's 10 megawatts of clean electricity, enough to power 4,600 households -- or to build a bunch of Opel sub-compacts. What's not consumed by the robots on the assembly line will be sold back to the grid, funding future rooftop installations at 19 other locations across Europe. We're thinking GM should maybe invest a little of that into powering the cars themselves via solar, or risk getting beaten to the punch by Toyota again.

[tbone @ Jul 9th 2008 12:56AM]

well, that's a step in the right direction. good on GM.

[BigD145 @ Jul 9th 2008 2:17AM]

I'm betting the Spanish government had to fund this one.

[kjb434 @ Jul 9th 2008 9:26AM]

Your right, all GM did was provide the roof to a factory. The Spanish tax dollars and other companies a truly paying for this.

It has nothing to do with helping the environment. It's all about making a statement and marketing.

[Charlie @ Jul 9th 2008 12:58AM]

sorry but powering cars through solar panels is just unrealistic. if a single LED can't be lit by a 2"x2" panel then a car roof ain't gonna be enough to power sh!t

[Charlie @ Jul 9th 2008 1:00AM]

meant to also say however that I do think the whole project in general is a great plan :D

[Aguiluz @ Jul 9th 2008 1:06AM]

I think you misread the article. They are powering the bots that make cars, not the cars themselves.

[phrogg @ Jul 9th 2008 1:42AM]

Aguiluz,

i'm pretty sure Charlie was referring to the last sentence: "We're thinking GM should maybe invest a little of that into powering the cars themselves via solar..."

In which case, his article would be perfectly within context, if not a bit pessimistic. At least he added the second comment to pick himself back up.

[Aguiluz @ Jul 9th 2008 1:04AM]

Pretty creative and environmentally friendly.

[Artie Lange @ Jul 9th 2008 1:10AM]

The only one getting beaten to the punch will be Toyota when GM releases the first available plug-in hybrid - the Volt - in model year '10.

And Phanboy can preemptively suck it.

[Reader @ Jul 9th 2008 1:22AM]

Ahhh shit son... waiting for phanbuoy to throw down on youuu

[Artie Lange @ Jul 9th 2008 1:33AM]

He's too busy upping his own posts.

[Razor @ Jul 9th 2008 1:20AM]

After killing the electric car, this is the least GM could do (yes, I know they weren't the only ones involved in the death of the EV1 =P).

[dreamscape86 @ Jul 9th 2008 1:28AM]

The American consumer killed the EV1, not GM. :P

[Razor @ Jul 9th 2008 1:41AM]

The American consumer is not why GM crushed dozens of perfectly functional leased EV1s when their owners wanted to buy them.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Who-Killed-The-Electric-Car-Full-Version

[Nitrousoxide @ Jul 9th 2008 1:59PM]

Please Razor. There were continuing costs to maintaining that fleet of EV1's They would have to maintain qualified repair folks, keep a supply of batteries and continue to investigate recall claims. All of this constitutes costs which they would have to suffer each year until all of the EV-1's were gone (and despite what that movie says, there wasn't enough demand to keep that fleet of cars alive for new production) That's expensive and GM determined that it wasn't worth the costs.

You can argue all you want about whether they were correct in how much it would have cost them, but that remains the reason why they killed the line. It has nothing to do with some nefarious evil plot to undo the electric car. The electric car just wasn't a viable product at that time, there needed to be new advancements in the relevant technologies to make it appealing to consumers.

[Reader @ Jul 9th 2008 1:20AM]

I had a hard time reading this article in a normal voice after the first line. Feel like I should do it in some form of meter.

[gad get @ Jul 9th 2008 1:23AM]

I just read it in my head, not out loud. Problem solved!

[David Gayler @ Jul 9th 2008 3:36AM]

The good new is that is sounds terrific and I'm sure will turn heads at the shareholders meeting, but has anybody in GM bothered to wonder what the weather is like in Spain this year? The rain in Spain falls everywhere, and the unusually high winds add to the fun.

Climate change is happening already and this shareholder marketing ploy is typical US - too little, too late.

[Jeko @ Jul 9th 2008 4:44AM]

Graduate, your facts are way off:
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/794/

One outdated study showed that the average solar panel gets five times more energy out than was originally put in. That was in the year 2000, and the efficiency keeps going up, so it's probably already substantially higher.

[PereCadena @ Jul 9th 2008 4:47AM]

There's some mistake in the article statmenets.

The plant will sell ALL ENERGY to the grid, as by spanish law and to promote the grow of solar cell ceilings the electric company has to pay each watt generetad by "green means" 10 times the price it costs to buy that one generated by dirty ones.

In spain electric energy is strongly subsidized by the government...

[Nastro @ Jul 9th 2008 8:21AM]

This is a mere publicity stunt. I guess even the spaniards have to appease the fascist enviro loons.

[ShadowKain @ Jul 9th 2008 4:04PM]

Investing in solar? Not yet, who would buy one? By the time they are the norm, we wont have a clear sky to use, the way we are abusing our atmosphere now. And no I am not a tree hugger, I love my gas guzzling car, just commenting on the inevitable...

[graduate @ Jul 10th 2008 12:00AM]

I just want to inform people out there that the energy that is required to produce a solar panel is equal to or greater than the energy that can be produced by a solar panel throughout its lifetime. Aside from that, in the process of producing the most well known solar panel types, some toxic metals might be needed in the process.

Highest solar panel efficiency is about 17%, that's if they can reach such an efficiency. Nanotech and others have lower efficiencies.

Solar panels are currently not an environmental viable and energy sustainable option for these reasons.

[fat_black_duke @ Jul 9th 2008 3:59AM]

Wasn't that myth debunked ten years ago already?

[Starnerf @ Jul 9th 2008 8:27AM]

Sounds like graduate needs to go back to school.