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Power Transportation Technology

Lightyear One Debuts As the First Long-Range Solar-Powered Electric Car (techcrunch.com) 125

Posted by BeauHD from the first-of-its-kind dept.
The new Lightyear One is a prototype electric car from a Netherlands startup that gets all it needs to run from the sun. It features a sleek, driver-friendly design and also boasts a range of 450 miles on a single charge. TechCrunch reports: The startup says that it has already sold "over a hundred vehicles" even though this isn't yet ready to hit the road, but Lightyear is aiming to begin production by 2021, with reservations available for 500 additional units for the initial release. You do have to pay around $136,000 USD to secure a reservation, however.

Lightyear One isn't just a plug-in electric with some solar sells on the roof: Instead it's designed from the ground up to maximize performance from a smaller-than-typical battery that can directly grab sun from a roof and hood covered with 16 square feet of solar cells, embedded in safety glass designed with passenger wellbeing in mind. The car can also take power directly from regular outlets and existing charging stations for a quick top-up, and again because it's optimized to be lightweight and power efficient, you can actually get around 250 miles on just one night of charging from a standard (European) 230V outlet.
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Lightyear One Debuts As the First Long-Range Solar-Powered Electric Car More

Lightyear One Debuts As the First Long-Range Solar-Powered Electric Car

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  • Waste of money (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    About 600W in middle of day assuming awesome high efficiency expensive solar cells. Best locations get about 2100kWh/m insolation per year, which at optimistic 30% efficiency and 1.6m is about 1000kWh, enough for about 4000km driving per year (mostly in summer). Assuming the car is never shaded.

    A folding wind turbine would probably be more effective, as would a car roof-top fold out PV system of much greater area. Even if they wouldn't look cool.

    Or spend money on a rooftop PV system and do something that

    • Best locations get about 2100kWh/m insolation per year

      Yeah, but THIS car is being built in the Netherlands. Temperate zone runs about 5 solar hours (equivalent of hours of noon sun) per day. Netherlands runs about 2.5. So cut it in half or worse.

      1.6 sq m * 1 kW input / sq m * 2.5 solar hours * 25% efficiency = 1 kWhr/day. A horsepower is close enough to 3/4 kW as not to matter, so call it 1 1/3 horsepower hours per day.

      That's not going to get you very far, even with very good aerodynamics, miniscule wei

      • Looking further:

        you can actually get around 250 miles on just one night of charging from a standard (European) 230V outlet.

        Assuming that's a 15A outlet and you're only plugged in for 8 hours, that's 27.6 kWhr. So the daily solar charge of 1 kWhr would be good for about 9 miles.

        • FWIW, 9 miles is enough to get me to work and back.

          Not that I'm interested in this particular car 'cause it's pretty ugly, but 9 miles is better than 0 miles.

          There's also the Sion from Sono Motors, which is similar in concept with similar solar recharging performance but looks more like a traditional vehicle.
          =Smidge=

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by nickovs ( 115935 )

        Don't forget that the 1 kW/m^2 solar incidence is if you are directly facing the sun. If the panels are flat on the roof and hood then you need to multiply that by the cosine of the latitude, so for Amsterdam you are looking at only 610Whr/day

    • A folding wind turbine would probably be more effective,

          Heck, a *sail* would be more effective.

            $136,000 is a lot of money for a single thermodynamics lesson.

    • TO drive something like a hnda civic at highway speeds requires about 20 to 30KW of power. So if this thing can soak up 1KW per hour over 8 hours then your commute better be short (remeber you have to go both ways). On the city streets where there's less air resistance at low speeds it would last longer.

    • The great thing about using a windmill is you could constantly stay at full charge while driving with it up!!

      Note for the humorless: Of course not really.

  • How cute. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How cute, and how much for a full day in the tropical sun?
    I'm guessing less than 1% for the same time on the outlet.

    Solar is dead in the water as far as a solution for this. Much better to consolidate it elsewhere.

    For reference this solar array is about 5 times what a sail boat needs to keep the batteries from fully discharging.

    This IS a scam. Just marketing wank parting fools with money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rew ( 6140 )

      The solar panels are rumored to deliver over 1kW, while a wall socket can deliver about 3.5kW. So, yes: less than a wall socket, doesn't charge at night, but then when you park it at work, it does recharge.

  • For the weekend warrior? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    One night of charging = 250 miles.. so, you can drive this thing on solar power on the weekend, so long as your park it in dubai for the rest of the week.

    • One night of charging = 250 miles.. so, you can drive this thing on solar power on the weekend, so long as your park it in dubai for the rest of the week.

      And if you drove it in Dubai, the first thing you would want to do is turn on the AC. Oops! The range just went down to about 25 miles.

  • Total BS (Score:3)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @09:55PM (#58825160) Homepage Journal

    I didn't even bother to read anything about it, but with current solar cell technology this is a total scam. You cannot generate meaningful energy with the surface area on a car.

    • Re:Total BS (Score:4, Interesting)

      by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@@@earthlink...net> on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @12:32AM (#58825744)

      You cannot generate meaningful energy with the surface area on a car.

      As someone that worked on a solar car project at university I have had this proven to me mathematically and practically.

      We had a "car" that is better described as an electric scooter under a shell carved from an enormous milk jug. The frame was made from the same steel alloy that racing bicycles are made of. They tried to use aluminum, as that was lighter yet, but nobody knew how to weld it to make it stay together and the material costs were getting expensive. It took Ford a long time to figure it out too, only recently offering it for their vehicles.

      The car's wheels were first just bicycle wheels but we kept breaking too many. Then we used motorcycle wheels but they weighed too much. Then we found someone that could make wheels to spec, but they cost so much that they'd be impractical for anything mass produced.

      The motor was tiny, because it had to just sip off the batteries while the sun charged them. The battery pack was huge to keep enough energy on hand to make it move. I was not allowed to drive it because at that time I weighed 160 pounds so I'd likely break it in half if I tried. Not that I wanted to drive it all that bad, it had no air conditioning.

      The car would cost something like $250,000 if we had to buy everything off the shelf, many of the parts were donated. This made getting insurance impossible, so we needed some kind of executive order from the governor to be allowed on the roads. It needed to charge from dawn to dusk so it could "race" for maybe 2 hours.

      Of course we have electric cars. We charge electric cars from solar power. What we don't have are cars that can carry all the solar collectors it needs to get somewhere and still be useful.

      • The car's wheels were first just bicycle wheels but we kept breaking too many.

        This is kind of a tangent but couldn't the modern super fat tires [dickssportinggoods.com] on some bikes now work pretty well for what you were building? They seem well between traditional bike tires and motorcycle tires. The wire cage (on these tires at least) looks like maybe it would still be too weak though.

      • Did you try carbon fibre motorcycle wheels? They are quite reasonably priced these days.

      • Re:Total BS (Score:4, Informative)

        by jiriw ( 444695 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @10:32AM (#58827964) Homepage

        I guess you are conveniently forgetting the company that made this prototype is essentially the same university team that won the solar car challenge (cruiser class) three times in a row (2013, 2015, 2017) with a passenger car carrying 4 passengers. They already proved mathematically it was possible 6 years ago.

        Now they made a nice looking production prototype. The car is twice as efficient with battery power as the Tesla S, doesn't need to be recharged for 'average' use on nice summer days, does 400 KM (250 mile) on its half-size (compared to Tesla S) battery on a full charge, no solar, 450KM in winter conditions with all bells and whistles turned on (including heating) and 800 KM when driving in full sunlight.

        I think that's quite impressive and it proves you're 'mathematically and practically' wrong.

        • I think that's quite impressive and it proves you're 'mathematically and practically' wrong.

          I think you forgot one important criteria for practicality. COST.

          You are talking about a car that is insanely expensive, can drive 250 miles after many hours of sitting in the sun, and do so while maybe carrying a small family. For the same price I can buy a bus, drive 300 miles on a tank, and refill in minutes to go another 300 miles. Or spend a fraction of what this solar car would cost, still carry a small family for 250 miles, stop for a break to let the screaming kids to run around and fill the tank

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They mention in the article that it charges 50-70km/day. Most of your charging is going to be from an outlet if you drive frequently, but if you drive only occassionally and not far, it's conceivable you could operate from solar only.

      • Baloney. People need to learn basic math. Every year this scam comes along and a certain segment of people fall for it. Do you think this is the first time someone has come out with a "prototype" of a solar powered car?

    • you shouldn't venture forth an opinion if you've not read the article or watched the video on Fullychargedshow but then again this is /.

      • No, if you even believe the headline you are an idiot and know nothing about science, and will believe anything as long as it is scif-fy like. But then again this is /.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I tried to follow the link in TFA to their web site, but it has a broken certificate and a malware warning from OpenDNS. Maybe they got hacked.

      Anyway, TFA says 16 sq feet of solar panels, or 1.5m2. So maybe 200W with good panels and good light, say 8 hours a day in the summer, or 1.6kWh/day best case.

      So maybe 10km / 6 miles range added per day, assuming it is fairly efficient. It's not nothing, it cover a bit of your commute, but you will be charging it from the mains.

    • Agreed. With the average total solar energy reaching the ground being about 350 watts per square meter and a single horse power being 760 watts, I don't see how that can work. That car has about 2 msq2 of panels. Maybe a 75HP motor. Do the math. After a multi-day charge, one just might be able to make it to the grocery store a couple of miles away, twice a week, in the summer. Even a solar cooking mirror only generates the cooking power of a tiny 500W microwave, on a good day.

  • To what's on the market now and distance per "single charge"?
  • Just add on a handy dandy 8m long trailer and pick up an extra 15 m^2 of panels. Problem solved!
  • .. does the Lightyear One vehicle have a look which is reminiscent to a 1980's incorrect representation of what they thought futuristic cars would look like in the year 2000?

    • .. does the Lightyear One vehicle have a look which is reminiscent to a 1980's incorrect representation of what they thought futuristic cars would look like in the year 2000?

      I'm guessing it looks that way because while 40 years may have passed there hasn't been a whole lot of change in cheap materials available for a mock-up. If someone wants curves on the cheap then it's taking some kind of sheet material and putting it onto another sheet where the end has been cut to shape for support. Round plastic molding is easy to find and paint, and if not bent too much can be curved to cover transitions. There will be unavoidable 3D curves needed but these can be kept small in size

    • It looks more like the cars in the UK 1970's program called UFO.

  • Thorium power will save the world, Scott Adams told me so.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    A few things I took away from the video:
    - We will never, in any real time span of concern, run out of thorium.
    - We can have real and practical thorium power for $50 million in development costs and within 15 years if we just set our minds to it.
    - Thorium is worthless to make bombs.
    - Thorium is such a good idea that even if there was no threat of global warming we should still develop this technology.

    When I hear that t

  • It's pretty funny that a bunch of tech heads on Slashdot are outraged...outraged I tell you ...that there exists a technology that is currently impractical.

    These are the same people that think there's going to be manned missions to Mars, cheap thorium power plants, and that they'll be playing Far Cry 9 on quantum computers.

    Cognitive dissonance gets strong when there is a political agenda.

    • It's pretty funny that a bunch of tech heads on Slashdot are outraged...outraged I tell you ...that there exists a technology that is currently impractical.

      The laws of physics dictate that solar powered cars will not ever be practical.

      These are the same people that think there's going to be manned missions to Mars, cheap thorium power plants, and that they'll be playing Far Cry 9 on quantum computers.

      That might be because we've already seen unmanned missions to Mars, seen manned missions to the moon, seen working thorium reactors, and seen Far Cry versions 1 through 5. Quantum computers? Not so much. We've seen what solar power can and cannot do. Solar power can't make a car go.

      Cognitive dissonance gets strong when there is a political agenda.

      I'm in favor of cleaning up the environment but I'm also in favor of arithmetic. I've seen the arithmetic on solar power, it's not all that hard

      • It's pretty funny that a bunch of tech heads on Slashdot are outraged...outraged I tell you ...that there exists a technology that is currently impractical.

        The laws of physics dictate that nuclear powered cars will not ever be practical.

        These are the same people that think there's going to be manned missions to Mars, cheap thorium power plants, and that they'll be playing Far Cry 9 on quantum computers.

        That might be because we've already seen unmanned missions to Mars, seen manned missions to the moon, seen pointless thorium projects, and seen Far Cry versions 1 through 5. Quantum computers? Not so much. We've seen what nuclear power can and cannot do. Nuclear power can't make a car go.

        Cognitive dissonance gets strong when there is a political agenda.

        I'm in favor of cleaning up the environment but I'm also in favor of arithmetic. I've seen the arithmetic on nuclear power, it's not all

        • I'm in favor of cleaning up the environment but I'm also in favor of arithmetic. I've seen the arithmetic on nuclear power, it's not all that hard to do. Anyone that has done an honest calculation of the energy output from nuclear power, the materials needed to collect, store, and convert nuclear power into something useful, and the area needed for nuclear power, will see that nuclear power will not save the planet. It might make a good sized contribution, but still far from the top.

          So, you support building at least a non-zero number of new nuclear power plants? That's good enough for me.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by MrKaos ( 858439 )

            So, you support building at least a non-zero number of new nuclear power plants? That's good enough for me.

            More manipulation.

            I've made it clear many times that I support the development of fission technology because we have to deal with spent fuel issue. Deployment of commercial nuclear reactors is a completely different thing simply because materials technologies don't exist to support that kind of technology at this current moment in time. Further there isn't geologically sound or appropriate spent fuel repositories and laws in place (IIRC the US Atomic Energy act as the source), in the US, to prevent them

            • Here's a bunch of people that disagree with you on your assessment of nuclear power.

              Idea of renewables powering UK is an 'appalling delusion' â" David MacKay
              https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]

              Terence Corcoran: Why the global fossil-fuel phase-out is a fantasy akin to time travel
              https://business.financialpost... [financialpost.com]

              IEA rings alarm bell on phasing out nuclear energy
              https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]

              This is not a question of IF we will have more nuclear power, but WHEN the politicians will wake up to the fact th

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by MrKaos ( 858439 )

                Here's a bunch of people that disagree with you on your assessment of nuclear power.

                I don't really care what other nuclear shills are saying about nuclear power in their effort to make nuclear power remain relevant. I take them about as seriously as I take you. Which isn't seriously at all because you're an idealist devoid of any solid study on this subject that doesn't favor your political position.

                This is not a question of IF we will have more nuclear power, but WHEN the politicians will wake up to the fact that we cannot do without nuclear power.

                Well you go on believing that and I'll redouble my effort to lobby politicians based on solid science. Nothing has been done to evolve nuclear power and another disaster is inevitable because

      • seen unmanned missions to Mars, seen manned missions to the moon, seen working thorium reactors, and seen Far Cry versions 1 through 5

        And none of them are practical. Yet, you don't see the kind of furious outcry against them that you do for solar energy for some reason. Other than solar energy, people on Slashdot seem to love impractical tech. I'll bet a whole bunch of you are even wearing Apple Watches right now.

        We've already seen working solar vehicles. In fact, there are a lot more working solar vehi

  • A Pedal Cycle with solar charges, says it can fully charge in 4 hours via Solar... found it relevant to the story. https://screecher.net/products... [screecher.net]

  • "you can actually get around 250 miles on just one night of charging from a standard (European) 230V outlet."

    WTF is 'one night'?

    So I can plug it in at 23:00 when the sun sets in Edinburgh and at 02:00 am when the sun rises it's full?

    We're big boys and girls you can tell us the exact hours needed.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "you can actually get around 250 miles on just one night of charging from a standard (European) 230V outlet."

      WTF is 'one night'?

      So I can plug it in at 23:00 when the sun sets in Edinburgh and at 02:00 am when the sun rises it's full?

      We're big boys and girls you can tell us the exact hours needed.

      So, during the summer, you people only sleep two hours? If you want to be pedantic, ask about what kind of miles. At 40 mph, at 120 mph? Braking and stopping a lot with a ton of losses where regenerative braking can't keep up? With AC on or off? Why stop at just the night part?

  • Still the wrong approach (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Wednesday June 26, 2019 @10:57AM (#58828134)

    This requires me to park my $170K car in direct sunlight. If I'm going to pay that much for a car, I'm going to live in it AND I'm going to pay to keep it covered. The better solution is to install solar panel covered parking spaces. More area for panels that are inclined to get the best sun, my car isn't destroyed by UV, AND the car is cooler when I go to get in it.

  • We've had the technology and application to do this since the late 80's.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • I am very interested.
  • I agree with the other posters that say there isn't enough surface area on a car to generate meaningful power. I've always wondered about 18 wheelers and things like city busses and mail or fedex delivery trucks. It seems to me that since they have a pretty large surface area exposed to direct sunlight, wouldn't this at least make a hybrid solar/gas powered vehicle very attractive from a fuel cost perspective?

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