By Matthew L. Wald | The New York Times
If Stonehenge had been built with a visitor’s parking lot, the spaces might have looked something like what Ford proposes for its C-Max Solar Energi, a plug-in hybrid with a rooftop solar panel.
Stonehenge, scientists tell us, took account of the sun’s changing path across the sky, using giant stone monoliths as seasonal alignment markers. Likewise, the C-Max Solar, a technology concept vehicle that Ford will display in Las Vegas, tracks the sun, though not for astronomical observation.
Rather, the car is intended to spend its days parked under a Fresnel lens, a kind of giant magnifying glass, and it is programmed to use its self-parking feature to maneuver as needed, staying aligned with the most concentrated area of sunlight. The car creeps a few feet over the course of the day to keep the solar panel under the lens’s focus point. And to compensate for the change of seasons, it lines itself up at a slightly different north-south positions from day to day when it is parked under the lens.
If you’d like to discuss energy issues, contact Court Rich, director of Rose Law Group’s Renewable Energy Department at crich@roselawgroup.com
