Craftable electric car (my concept art)

[Rare Avantgarde Rat]

 Since there are already solar panels and batteries,I decided that they can be used for something else. After a little brainstorm, I stopped at the idea of an electric car.  I took the volvo 740 station wagon as a basis, but I did not repeat the shape of the car and accessories 1 to 1 (I think that the station wagon would be a great addition to the game, because we already have sedans and a little variety wouldn't hurt). I also chose the station wagon because of the large roof area, which is great for solar panels. In my opinion, it would be a good "endgame" transport, with its pros and cons.For example:

Pros:
No gasoline required,
Fast acceleration ,
Stability on the road.
Cons:
Expensive to manufacture,
Small trunk capacity (or none at all),
There is only room for the driver,
Slow charging.

This is the first things that came to mind, there is a lot of room for imagination.

 About the drawing. In this drawing we can see that most of the interior has been dismantled in order to accommodate as many batteries as possible. Of course, it was possible to put more batteries in the car, especially in the trunk area, but I decided that I wanted to add a little more story to the image. Hope this drawing looks believable.



 In this one I have depicted the exterior of the car. A fairly old and rusty car with an improvised platform for solar panels. As usual, it is made of garbage that was found nearby, I think the image speaks for itself.



 I drew this image in a short period of time and it should be regarded as a sketch, not a finished work, there are a lot of things that can be improved and done more accurately. In general, the whole design can be revised and made much more interesting, but for my purposes, this drawing is good enough.

 Write what you think about this idea, as well as your variations of the pros and cons, it will be interesting for me to read

 

[Javabean867]

Oh I think it should have 3 sections of storage. 1 for batteries(like the batter bank) 1 for solar panels, and a small trunk.  

The better quality batteries the faster it goes, and more range.  And the better quality solar panels the faster it charges those batteries.

 

[Arma Rex]

You ought to ask what @Ragsy 2145's and @Guppycur's thoughts are on this idea. Really like the concept, could be useful!

 

[zztong]

I'm all for the alternative energies and transports showing up in the game. IIRC, 7D2D is set in the future, and these technologies are here today.

As for "game" aspects, panels on the vehicle should not turn it into a perpetual motion machine. That is, energy from the vehicle's batteries should be consumed faster than it can be generated. Then, bases with larger battery banks, larger panels, and generators, could be used to recharge the car's batteries more quickly. Panels on the car would still be handy as you would get some charge back while the car was parked and you were raiding a POI. In short, there should be something to manage, like fuel.

 

[Pwnlord]

I really like your art, man. That's great.

This sounds great. I'm all for more un/conventional vehicles instead of the same Bike/Minibike/Motorcycle/4x4/Autogyro.

Another possible balance choice: does not and cannot offroad without damaging its solar panels.

 

[Syphon583]

I love this idea as well. Awesome concept art, too! My only question I guess would be what's the real advantage to this car? I know the big plus is the no gasoline, but gas is stupid cheap to manufacture as it is, and this being envisioned as a late-game vehicle (makes sense since it has solar panels), getting gas should not be an issue. The fact that it's only one passenger might be annoying (but I only play SP, so it wouldn't be a breaker for me), and little to no storage again, makes sense, but as a late-game vehicle I would expect something that provides me some advantage. Just seems like the cons outweigh the pros a little. It's a fun option as a mode of transportation, though. Again, really cool concept art! I guess I could never see myself building it when a gas vehicle would be so much cheaper to make (no solar panels) and practically no hassle to get fuel for it.

Now what might be interesting to think about is an early-game electric vehicle (with no solar panels) like a scooter or something when gas is a little harder to come by. You'd have to recharge the batteries with a generator at your base, but those sip on gas, so it wouldn't be a huge strain on resources. Same constraints of course; single passenger, small storage capacity, but long range. I'd also think that acceleration would be fast, but holding SHIFT should drain the batteries faster.

If it was an option in addition to or in place of a mini bike, I could definitely see myself building an electric scooter any day of the week. Mini bikes are waste IMO.

 

[doughphunghus]

what's the real advantage to this car?

(And reasons given...)

ummm, i kinda agree theres not a great advantage, even though i love the concept even if its not "some advantage over the other transports". Basically: at this "current" (ha) level of diacussion, it would just mostly be for pure fun, and a challenge to craft.

some thoughts, if this were to be added as a vanilla asset and not a mod... and im adding some non vanilla dreams as well just for posterity:

1. I don't think "making it super fast" will work as i believe the max speed limits of the vanilla game are are to allow the chunks to update smoothly. So likely the fastest vanilla vehicles are at max allowed speeds for vanilla settings. 

2. the immediate cool thing that comes to my mind is that when you hit a player/zed with this car while driving, they should get shocked. This works well with the "only single player can drive it" as if a second player tried to get in it would shock them (ha). This would be a unique "fun" mechanic... especially in multiplayer...though might be OP during horde night, so make the "shocking" drain the batteries quite a bit so you only get a few shocks out of them when batteries are at max capacity down to 50% or something.

3. the car could act like a mobile "power station/generator". When its parked it acts like a battery bank. Could be really fun to park and wire it up to a POI...or to just attach electrical traps to it (via wires... not traps attached to car) and use it as part of base defense. Then if you had to "escape" and jumped into it, the wires break and the base shuts down. The benefit would be the ability to have alt of batteries in it, so kore output than a solar or battery bank, so it can run more traps. It would be super neat if it would "auto attach" to a nearby relay when parked next to it so parking it could activate power at a base. but thats not vanilla, just an idea.

4. If vehicle noise did attract zeds (i don't think it does.... but it should!), obviously this would be the silent vehicle, like the bicycle should be.

5. Maybe the "smaller storage capacity" for general items can be offset by having a much larger "solar cell" and "battery only storage" area. Since batteries don't stack in regular inventory, you can use the car as storage for batteries (say... 20 of them). When they are in the car they get recharged... maybe just slowly? Then this becomes an easy way to charge a lot of batteries (if you don't drive it a lot) and a way to transport a lot of batteries to a secondary site. The more solar cells (and expense for them) the faster it charges the batteries... but still make it charge slow so its a management thing if you're driving the vehicle a lot, but if you don't its just an expensive massive charging/battery bank.