3 Interesting Solar Car Projects

if you instead design an electric car to just be very efficient all those problems go away efficiency is the magic key to making electric cars better and it is ridiculously overlooked in modern car design hi welcome to another episode of Cold Fusion in December of 2022 a remarkable event would cause underground murmurs in the automotive industry a Little Dutch company called light here had done the impossible an electric car that could drive for months without needing to be charged and it wasn't a concept car it was actively being delivered to customers what it was was indeed the world's first production solar family car although it sounds too good to be true it actually does prove that the solar car audio isn't as implausible as it seems there are some compromises though it was ridiculously expensive but the idea was solid and if further developed it could be an amazing future sadly though as soon as the excitement started around the new achievement it was essentially over light year declared bankruptcy so what went wrong and also there's a last minute twist to the story so be sure to stick around for that you are watching tele Fusion TV [Music] solar-powered cars largely remained a distant dream despite numerous technological advancements the concept is fascinating the idea of having a virtually infinite power source that doesn't cost anything to fuel however the industry still faces hurdles overall solar panels aren't very efficient at their maximum consumer solar panels can get up to about 22 efficiency but they're also heavy and relatively expensive a solar film on the other hand is a lot cheaper and lighter but it's less efficient usually below 15 percent and this becomes a great engineering challenge finding the balance between efficiency cost and weight moreover these cars must absolutely sit power in order to be viable despite these obstacles promising designs are moving closer to the mainstream with each passing year and there was one company that stood above them all thank you the origins of light here go back to 2013 in the Australian Outback of all places this is the location of the annual Bridgestone World solar challenge the event is as it sounds different teams compete to drive across the Australian desert a distance of three thousand kilometers or 1900 miles all the way from Darwin in the north to Adelaide in the south it's a timed event with checkpoint sections whoever crosses the Finish Line first wins a team of engineering students at the Technical University of einhoven in the Netherlands brought their car to the event they named the car Stella in 2013 was going to be its debut it boasted a top speed of 120 kilometers an hour or 75 miles per hour and could seat four people the vehicle won first place in their category in 2015 the team won again but this time they even had the vehicle legally registered in 2017 they won again interestingly in the context of a full year of operation the car was so energy efficient that it was energy net positive but this feat can even be achieved intraday the IEEE Spectrum Journal reports quote what might be most impressive about the Stellar Lux is that it's energy positive on average the car uses less energy driving than it produces during the day even in a place like the Netherlands where it's not constantly Sunny depending on the weather the daily driving range of the car and solar power alone varies between 50 and 300 kilometers and driving any less than the daily Max solar range results in a surplus of energy that can be returned to the grid end quote the team obviously knew their stuff and thought that they could take this idea even further so later that year five of the students from the University team launched the light year company the goal was simple they were going to produce the world's first commercially viable solar family car it wasn't going to be easy though crossing the Australian outback is one thing but how do you Mass produce such a vehicle what about safety standards and government regulations this would surely add to the cost and weigh down the car but the idea of a car that charges itself was too good to let go of [Music] car now dump the light year zero was announced in mid-2019 and started production in 2021 after raising 110 million dollars in funding they began selling in early 2022 if you live in a sunny City environment and only drive for sure periods it could be a great fit and that's what thousands of people thought when they dropped 296 000 US Dollars on the car it was going to be available in the EU Switzerland Norway and they're even not so Sunny UK here's a clip from the YouTube channel the fully charged show showing the car in operation right we are out on the road in the very nearly production ready light year zero this is a bit surreal this has been a long time coming this moment I think my first impression is that I'm very aware that I'm driving a really really efficient car because the car is making sure that I'm aware of that fact on this screen in the middle here I can see exactly what my solar panels are doing there's no point building a hyper-efficient car if you're not going to then encourage people to treat it properly and drive it properly and this car very obviously wants to be driven in an efficient way some of our less technically inclined viewers may be wondering why are light years so obsessed with efficiency well currently the popular method for giving an electric car big range is by giving it a really big battery but doing so has negative knock-on effects on cost weight and about a million other things but if you instead design an electric car to just be very efficient all those problems go away an efficient EV can make do with a smaller battery which makes it cheaper to buy cheaper to run lighter better to drive quicker to charge and ultimately kinder to the planet to name just a few of the benefits put simply efficiency is the magic key to making electric cars better and it is ridiculously overlooked in modern car design the light year zero is a sleek and somewhat futuristic looking sedan it incorporates five square meters of solar panels into the body and this all feeds into a 61.2 kilowatt hour battery capable of a range of 625 kilometers or 388 miles the power output of the car is 130 kilowatts the light year zero is covered in a thousand solar panels under ideal conditions the solar panels covering the hood and the Fastback roof can chip in up to 1.05 kilowatts of constant trickle charging in essence it's a plug-in solar hybrid some cities can have over 150 days of sunshine per year City driving in these locations could see you drive 60 kilometers per day just from the Sun alone effectively for certain periods of the Year you'd never have to charge the car sure 60 kilometers isn't a massive distance but I still think that's pretty cool but because the car is so efficient the performance is well emaciated the top speed is 160 kilometers an hour or 99 miles an hour and it has slow acceleration with a 0-60 time of 10 seconds but those are the sacrifices you have to make for efficiency on the interior it seats five people and has a 10.1 inch touchscreen there are so many interesting things about this car even down to the countries that make it it is a rare European Affair a Dutch company whose car is built in Finland and designed in Italy [Music] overall things were looking good for the light year company and they were in pole position for a revolution but in January 2023 there was a shock announcement light year announced that they were halting the production of the xero model and redirecting their efforts towards the production of the light year 2. the light year 2 is a more affordable version of their Vision Atlas Technologies the subsidiary that was responsible for the manufacturing of the light year zero would be allowed to go bankrupt there was expected to be 600 job losses nobody actually knew much about the Light Year too and the bankruptcy of the manufacturing contractor was a huge shock to the community was the dream over so quickly what happened the reasons for bankruptcy aren't clear just yet but ultimately turning an experimental vehicle into a mass-market product was either a more difficult or B more expensive than originally estimated there were plenty of overhead costs designing tooling manufacturing testing paying staff and you name it that's a lot of costs and the money coming in was only pre-orders and external investors but soon the investment would dry up we can't ignore the economic timing as 2022 started to wrap up light year was walking into an economic storm that would take down their business in 2020 fearing deflation from covert lockdowns central banks panicked and drove interest rates to zero and printed money obviously prices started Rising as a consequence to combat this central banks started raising interest rates sharply starting in the middle of 2022 Rising interest rates made investment funds harder to come by the very same funds that a capturally intensive startup like Lightyear needed to function add to this supply chain disruptions from the war in Ukraine also driving up material costs ultimately this all proved too much for light year and they bowed out the light year story isn't over just yet but before we get back to them let's explore some of the other recent solar car efforts foreign weren't the only ones to suffer this fate too the company Sono was planning to release the Scion a plug-in solar hybrid car which could travel 189 miles on the charge the Scion's body was completely covered in 456 solar cells although less visually pleasing the idea was popular there were over 19 000 reservations at a cost of thirty thousand dollars but it wasn't to be in December of 2022 the company announced that they were unable to raise enough Capital they resorted to crowdfunding to help their project but by February 2023 this had also failed and the plans to manufacture were canceled aptero is another effort in this space although they're a little more unconventional what they're planning is a two-seater three-wheeled vehicle the range is an impressive 1000 miles or 1 600 kilometers they achieved this by using a lightweight resin and composite materials as well as a very aerodynamically efficient design the vehicle has two 50 kilowatt wheel hub Motors and requires less than 100 watt hours of energy per mile that's about 2.5 times more energy efficient than a Tesla Model 3. the solar panels on the vehicle can add an extra 66 kilometers or 41 miles per day from sunlight under ideal conditions this once again means that drivers May seldom have to recharge their vehicles the price range is from 25 900 to 47 000 all versions have an electronic speed limit of 180 kilometers an hour or 110 miles per hour over 30 000 vehicles have been reserved and this was worth about one billion dollars in sales they aim to have their first deliveries in 2024 and begin to ramp up production in 2025. we'll see if this one happens so a last minute twist to this story instead of packing up and going home light here are going to give it another go they're back in business the light year company is in the process of restructuring their assets the new Arrangement will be a trimmed down version of their company the focuses strictly on the more affordable light year 2. in the deal lightly will form a new company and put up their intellectual property as collateral if the company fails again investors can walk away with this IP and use it within another company that they think is better managed the light year 2 is said to be releasing in 2025 for 40 000 US Dollars the company has 21 000 pre-orders but the thing is this low price is not a Guarantee Supply Chain issues may affect the cost of raw materials but it's still going to be cheaper than the original model according to the CEO so how is it so much cheaper well again according to their CEO the light year zero costs so much because it was designed for a limited production and a lot of elements for the production process were custom made the team is bringing the technology learned from the light year zero down to the light year 2. but this doesn't fully explain it for me so I think perhaps they've also cut down operation costs and moved the manufacturing out of Europe ultimately it's a bit of a question mark and it remains to be seen for me surprisingly the light year 2 is a bigger car being more of an SUV platform Lightyear co-founder Lex host flip speaks quote this is great news all involved worked relentlessly to secure the continuation of our mission we kept the interests of all stakeholders at Heart during the process we realized that the impact on our employees investors clients and suppliers is significant but we tried to find the best way forward for everyone end quote is high stakes for the company because the lenders may have the right to seize and sell off IP assets if there are more money problems if this happens the light year team will be done for good so in conclusion these cars don't solve every problem facing the advancement of solar powered travel they are not some miracle but they do act as a proof of concept and I think it's a fantastic step in the right direction the engineering team behind Lightyear have proved themselves by winning multiple solar competitions but as we've seen to mass produce these cars is challenging I honestly admire the effort and I think it's so cool that Engineers are daring to do something that's so difficult it's clear to see that as solar technology improves we'll be seeing it more and more in fact Toyota's new Prius has a solar panel on the roof that can add up to four miles of charge per day I'm wishing the light year Team all the best and even if they don't make it in the Solar automotive industry I hope someone else does with a little more time the solar-powered revolution could just be around the corner so I'll pose the question to you if you could pick up a solar car for around 30 000 US Dollars and you can get an extra 50 kilometers of range or 30 miles of range per day just from the Sun but it happened to be pretty slow would you get one I'll be interested to know your thoughts some quick housekeeping before I wrap this video up my second episode in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is live in it I explore the intersection of AI and education and is it still worth getting a University degree in the coming age of AI it's an interesting topic so I'll leave a link down in the description below and a huge thank you to those of you who commented on the last episode seeing all of your positive reactions makes everything worth it so thank you alright so that's about it from me my name is dagogo and you've been watching cold fusion and I'll catch you again soon for the next episode cheers guys have a good one [Music] thank you [Music] it's new thinking

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 713,149

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: JkCXwlmLCTs

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2023