The Solar Car: Eat Your Heart Out Elon / Tesla!
The next step in electrical cars is going to be taken by this tiny company in the Netherlands. The step Elon Musk must have loved to take, but didn't.
A full solar powered commercial car! No need for charging from the energy grid, but solely from solar power.
Yesterday, the company Lightyear (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) presented its first commercial solar car: the Lightyear One. The first 10 cars they plan to deliver in 2019. The next 100 cars they plan to deliver in 2020. The car can be ordered through their website and they claim they already sold 5 cars. The car costs 119,000 Euro (excl VAT) though, not cheap, but then again, more or less the same price as a Tesla model S (yep, in the Netherlands cars are expensive!).
Lightyear One will be a four-wheel drive electric car covered with solar panels, but it can also be loaded in traditional ways. If the Lightyear One is charged for an hour with a standard power outlet, it can drive about 40 kilometres. The range increases to 110 kilometres when a standard 10 kW power outlet is used and 850 kilometres when a power charger is used. The range the car will be able to drive depends a lot on the sun conditions, for example, in Honolulu the car would be able to drive twice the distance compared to for instance in Amsterdam. The company expects this car to be able to drive about 10.000 kilometres per year on solar power when used in the Netherlands.
In a TV interview the Lightyear team is explaining they are already working more than 5 years on the solar panel technology. This gives them the competitive advantage over any traditional car maker, they simply do not have dedicated teams, knowledge and experience to come up with the most important aspects of a solar powered car: design of the solar panels to be very efficient as well as lightweight. Members of the Lightyear One team entered and won in 2013 the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge championship with the first ever build solar powered family car (named 'Stella'); In addition they won the title 'Best Technology Achievement Crunchie' award from TechCrunch. In 2015 they drove with a newer version of Stella, the 'Stella Lux', 1.500 kilometres on a single solar powered battery charge and prolonged their title in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge championship.
