Solar power cars vs alcohol as fuel

Earth is to small for alcohol driven cars. Photovoltaic has an about 240 times better performance than biomass for producing energy

1997-06-21 to alt.solar.photovoltaic   Re: Solar power cars

Ken Finney wrote in article
<33A6B34C.3C40@boeing.com>...
> David Wells wrote:
> >
> >         Solar cars? Yeah, you ARE going to have to pay for them, some day.
> > Might as well figure out how to do it now, eh?
>
> I'm in favor of solar, really, I am.  The problem with solar power versus liquid
> fuels isn't that solar doesn't pack a lot of power, its that liquid fuels pack
> ENORMOUS amounts of power given the size and weight of fuel tank. Alcohol can
> be produced at prices that will prohibit solar powered cars from ever becoming
> practical (for most people).  And alcohol is just a form of concentrated solar
> energy.
Earth is to small for alcohol driven cars.

You can produce about 0.1 l per squaremeter and year. This is about 0.3 kWh motion power for a car

Photovoltaic can produce in middle europe about 80 kWh per squaremeter and year.

240 times better performance.

To solve the problem with the storage, the car should be reloaded while driving on certain highways The energy track system.

Let's have 16 kWh for 100 km and 15000 km per year. 30 square meter are enough to produce the power. If in the near future are 10 billion people here on earth, no problem with 3 billion car. 90.000 square kilometer PV are enough.

Let's have 5 l alcohol for 100 km and 15000 km per year 7500 square meter to produce the alcohol. 22.5 millionsquare kilometer best land for agriculture. 2.25 the area of the US.