Solar-powered cars have been around for a long time, but really only on an experimental and purely anecdotal level. However, thanks to advances in technology, this may soon change. An all-terrain car (electric of course) Powered only by solar panels placed on your body He managed to complete the 1,000-kilometer journey across Morocco and the Sahara.
The two-seater Stella Terra, designed by students at the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands), recently managed to successfully complete this challenge. traversing a wide variety of landscapes, traveling on country roads and roads other than traditional highwaysand testing the real performance of a car like this. As a result, the technology is already mature enough to face this new mobility horizon.
The car reaches a point It has a top speed of 145 kilometers per hour, weighs only 1,200 kilos and has a range of at least 710 km on a sunny day.
The Solar Team Eindhoven team responsible for this project pointed out that the technology used to complete the structure of high-efficiency solar panels is ten years ahead of other similar products on the market.
Stella Terra is a vehicle designed to have off-road vehicle features, but It is also efficient and lightweight enough to run on solar energy. Therefore, technicians on this team had to design almost all components of the car from scratch, from the suspension to inverters for the solar panels.
The vehicle is equipped with a rechargeable lithium-ion (Li) battery, allowing it to operate in less sunny climates.although over shorter distances. The level of energy provided by the car’s solar panels is also sufficient to provide enough electricity to cook meals or charge mobile phones or cameras using a plug-in device.
One and a half week test It flourished in the dry and rugged terrains of North Africa, from Tangier to the Sahara. During all this time, there was only one fault in the vehicle’s steering, which could be quickly resolved.
We hope this can inspire car manufacturers like Land Rover and BMW to make the industry a more sustainable one. “In fact, the vehicle was very comfortable in off-road conditions because it is very light and does not get stuck,” he said.
The efficiency of the converter specially designed for automobile solar panels was 97% while converting sunlight absorbed by photovoltaic cells into electrical charge. Therefore, Stella Terra turned out to be a third more efficient than originally planned.
Britt van Hulst, 21, the project’s financial director, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper that there was still work to be done before the design could be brought to market, but it offered an avenue for major carmakers to explore.
High economic cost
The biggest challenge for designers who want to make solar-powered cars is Limited surface area on which to place panels.
But, The biggest obstacle is economic. The production costs of panels that can produce enough energy to drive vehicles over long distances are high. The most efficient panels on the market currently achieve around 45% efficiency, but most conventional panels have an efficiency of between 15% and 20%.
In fact, the cost of production appears to have been a determining factor in the failure of Atlas Technologies, a subsidiary of Netherlands-based Lightyear, in its latest attempt to enter the automotive market. The same newspaper announced that the company planned to produce solar-powered electric cars with a retail price of 500,000 euros last year, but went bankrupt due to a lack of orders.
The company has since resurfaced with a new model that will cost $40,000 per vehicle, with a range of more than 600 kilometers per charge.
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