A Fully Solar-Powered Car May Be Hitting The Road by 2019

 Lightyear One, a car whose ability to use solar power has been thought of as an impossible feat, just won a Climate Change Innovator Award. 

 Designed by the Dutch startup Lightyear, the "car that charges itself"  can supposedly drive for months without charging and has a 400-800 km  range. But is a solar-powered car feasible? 

 For years, the concept of "solar-powered cars" has loomed over the  electric car industry as a hopeful, possible future. But there are many  who argue that this concept is not only impractical, it is basically  impossible. For instance, a solar roof that was designed to power the Toyota  Prius was found to only be useful in combination with a traditional  battery charging system and it only added an additional 4 miles to the  range - not that impressive. One engineer even calculated the power capacity of a car with a solar roof under the optimal amount of solar radiation, and the results are underwhelming. Engineers measure the rate at which an engine's work is done in  "horsepower" (hp): the car equipped with a solar roof had a horsepower  rate of 6.4. For comparison, engineer Tom Lombardo said, "my riding lawnmower has an 18 hp engine." The first 10 Lightyear One cars are due to be released in 2019. Up  until now fully solar-powered cars were not considered a realistic  prospect, Solar Assisted Electric Vehicles (SAEVs) were considered the  best possible option for solar cars, adding up to hundreds of miles to a car's range. 

 But the Dutch Lightyear promises to topple the canon with a car that is  not only fully powered by the sun, but also overcomes some of the  conventional challenges associated with the technology, such as  intermittency and low performance. 

 The five entrepreneurs have been prototyping and working out the  kinks of their concept for years but, as long as the project remains an  early-stage design, it is difficult to imagine that anyone would be  capable of bridging the gap between SAEVs and fully-solar vehicles with  record-breaking range. But small encouraging signs are emerging all over the world. For example, in 2017, the Byron Bay Railroad Company created the first fully solar-powered train. And, while the vehicle has a very limited range, it shows that solar-powered vehicles are within the realm of possibility. 

source: sciencealert