[thegrim33]

In the end, the physics of it, for a consumer vehicle, just doesn't work out. No matter how much you'd like it, you can't fight the physics. The best you could do, with a vehicle that has an entire roof of solar panels, is a vehicle that you'd need to leave outside and wait for a couple weeks for it to recharge. That's still useful to a lot of people, but it's not this revolutionary "solar powered vehicle drives hundreds of miles a day" story.

Conveniently, the article leaves out every piece of data that you'd need access to to be able to actually judge what they built. The article is just a typical corporate puff piece to advertise for a company that wants to sucker in investment money.

[Someone]

This car wasn’t built by a company, but by a university that built a family of (generally ugly, IMO) solar-powered cars. See https://solarteameindhoven.nl/stella-family (which doesn’t have much info, either)

[stevage]

Can you elaborate? It says the car is only 25% lighter than a typical SUV with an off-road range of 500km, so it doesn't sound like any crazy compromises here.

[cbhl]

A 500km range sounds like the range of a fully charged electric battery, but not the range from a single day of charging off the solar cell.

As a concrete example: folks have tested the 2024 Toyota Prius Prime and find that a full day of charging generates just under 1 kWh of power over the whole day (not 1 kWh per hour, 1kWh total) which yields just under 3 miles of driving (given 40 mi range and a 13.6 kWh battery). And as a sedan it also weighs about 25% lighter than a "typical SUV". Suppose this student car has 3x the solar panels as the Toyota -- that would only give you 9 miles or 14.5 km of range.

[stevage]

Ah thanks, yes, it doesn't mention how much time they spent charging. Although it does say the panels are extendable when stationary.