Who killed the flying car?

When I was a kid, I never wanted an electric car. I wanted one that flew. Like the Delorean in Back to The Future II. It’s almost 2008 and still no flying cars.

Why is that an important question? Because it underscores that maybe our dreams and our needs aren’t always the same thing. I now know that a flying car would be a really bad idea (if you doubt me, drive on the 405 in Los Angeles and then imagine it in 3D). But perhaps the design challenge wasn’t in making a car fly, but making it as ultra efficient and human-friendly (not just earth friendly) as possible.

That’s the difficulty with what the cleantech industry is trying to do, I think. While we want bigger houses and bigger/faster cars, it is coming at a price. Our environment at large is suffering. Air pollution still causes severe health effects in our cities. And gas is expensive (economically) and costly (politically) .

The electric car wasn’t killed by Big Auto, Big Oil, or SCAQMD.

We killed it.

Nanosolar’s coming out party

Nanosolar has announced deliver of its first solar panel. This is a long time coming and indicates a great opportunity for OEMs to integrate this product into their designs.

From the Nanosolar blog:

Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:
- the world’s first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;

- the world’s first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;

- the world’s lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;

- the world’s highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;

- an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.

The $0.99/watt jumps out at me immediately. Other companies have made claims to severely reducing the $/watt, but this is the lowest I’ve seen claimed by any particular company.

What’s not quite clear to me yet (and I only know so much about this technology) how much square footage is needed to get a given output.  Or in other words, did they reduce the numerator or increase the denominator?  Decreasing the numerator means they made a significantly cheaper cell out of a less efficient material.  While the costs on this sound very compelling, the square footage matters as there’s usually a limit to surface area for solar-based projects.  Best Buy’s rooves are only so big.  So while these panels are cheap, if they cover the entire roof, will they produce a significant amount of electricity?

I’d be interested in seeing what products/installations are developed with this technology in the coming months.