The Lightyear One is a prototype ‘solar car’ with 450 miles of range
Although I don't own an electric car, I'm quite obsessed by them. The below article talks about a new type of electric car, which has a roughly 450 mile / 700 km range (under ideal conditions). It looks good, but the real party piece is that they managed to integrate 5 Square metres of solar panels into the body work (roof and hood), which is very impressive. From what Youtube Channel Fully Charged reported, this means the solar panels can recharge at about a rate of 1,5 kw per hour, good for 12 km of range per hour, or roughly the same rate as your typical European 220 V household plug. It may not sound like much, but it is a gamechanger, and I'll explain why.
The typical daily trip a car owner takes is usually less than 50 km or 30 miles. This comes to around 18000 km / 12000 miles annually. A Solar-powered car can easily provide that much charge, provided you don't go on trips longer than the car's overall range and in those rare cases, you can just use a public fast charger to top up. A typical California or Australia day will easily provide the car with 100 miles / 160 km of range just by parking it outside in the sun. Basically, this means that once you pay for your solar-powered car, you'll never have to pay to fuel it up again, except for very rare occasions, where you're taking a road trip. The era of free energy is officially here and it seems Solar has won the day.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/25/1...range-features
