Wind

Today the sand was blowing off one of the beaches onto the freeway and hopefully not taking the paint off of cars and micro-pitting their windshields. I was thinking just now how that same 30 mph nuisance wind could be an energy source if a generating fan were placed on a hybrid electric car or truck that could folded up in place in a wind. So even if an electric car was parked facing into the wind it could generate power while parked. Wind whenever and wherever it arises is a VAST, VAST, untapped resource. Until steam engines it was one of the main engines of commerce worldwide through sailing ships. On hybrid electric cars or trucks this wind source now makes sense again en masse along with a solar array on the roof of every hybrid electric so that whether running or parked on a sunny day the solar array would be generating electricity to either power the vehicle or to be sold to the grid (directly through its plug-in line)if not used by the vehicle.

I was thinking of a great design where one could incorporate solar cells directly into the non moving part of the car mounted wind generator. Only the moving blades of the wind generator would not be covered with solar cells to generate power during sunlight hours even when there wasn't any wind.