Vatican Keen On Solar-Powered Electric Popemobile

[ReinnieR]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120103988.html
http://green.autoblog.com/2010/12/02/pope-benedict-wants-solar-powered-electric-popemobile/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/03/the-pope-desires-a-solar-powered-popemobile-might-just-get-one/

[MithLuin]

Very cool idea! The popemobiles are donated, though, so they'll have to find a company that wants to design a specialty one. That bullet-proof bubble is heavy, so it can't be your average extra-light car. More likely, it'll end up being a battery-power car with solar panels to recharge it or something.

It is nice to see that the Church doesn't view all newer technology with instinctive distrust. Obviously, not everything new is good (here's looking at you, IVF), but....not everything new is bad, either. I remember when the interview with the SSPX bishop who is a Holocaust denier came out within a week of when the excommunications were listed, and the Vatican came out looking very poorly. The official announcement from the Vatican? We should have been paying more attention to his public statements and perhaps need to have more web-saavy people working for us.

So many people accuse Catholics of ignoring population issues (since we don't subscribe to the 2-child-or-less policy), it's nice to be able to say, look, we [i]do[/i] care about sustainability and living simply, we just don't approach it in the same way you are.

[ardillacid]

The idea of solar powered cars is a scam. The sun doesn't give the earth enough energy per square length to do meaningful work even if we ignore low efficiencies of solar panels. It's thermodynamics.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dTvSa1rCOY[/media]

That's why solar panel power plants cover miles and miles of desert. More likely it's going to be electric powered (and by that I mean charged using electricity generated with coal), supplemented with a few solar panels slapped on it to look good.

Edited December 7, 2010 by notardillacid

[MithLuin]

I agree that a solar-powered car with the mass of a typical popemobile is not feasible. However, I don't see why you couldn't use a bank of solar panels to charge the battery if you wanted to. They put solar panels on the roof of the Vatican and my dad put some on the roof of his barn. Just the roof of a decent-sized building is enough to generate a significant amount of power. It's not like the popemobile goes on marathons, so there's plenty of time and opportunity to recharge batteries.

[InfinitaMisericordia]

What they need to do is fund John Searl's [url="http://www.johnsearlstory.com/"]work[/url] and have him build the pope a flying saucer.

No.

Seriously.[img]http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/public/style_emoticons/default/blush.gif[/img]

Or, if not a saucer, just a popemobile powered by one of Searl's current generators.

[Mercy me]

[quote name='MithLuin' timestamp='1291761161' post='2191492']
I agree that a solar-powered car with the mass of a typical popemobile is not feasible. However, I don't see why you couldn't use a bank of solar panels to charge the battery if you wanted to. They put solar panels on the roof of the Vatican and my dad put some on the roof of his barn. Just the roof of a decent-sized building is enough to generate a significant amount of power. It's not like the popemobile goes on marathons, so there's plenty of time and opportunity to recharge batteries.
[/quote]

From a security point of view it had better be substantial enough to provide adequate protection, fast enough to get the Pope out of harms way to safety and have the range to actually get him there. Solar/batt. at the moment can't do that.