The idea of creating a solar-powered car is nothing new, though much of what is holding back adoption of this technology is practicality. Can these cars cover long distances solely on the sun? How fast can they go? If you don’t plan on driving on highways and would much rather amble along a country road, there may just be a car for you yet.
The company Sunn has created an easy to build and use solar powered car, perfect for small country roads and drives around campgrounds. While the “car” appears more like a cart than anything else, it certainly works and is pretty cheap considering all those solar photovoltaic cells. All in all, the cost of the kit comes to about $6,500 (batteries not included… seriously).
The little car can travel up to 25mph with a range of 3 miles on the solar panels alone and up to 30 miles with a set of batteries. 25 mph is not very fast nor is 3 miles very far, most people can bike faster than 25 mph and travel distances much further than 3 miles so, what’s the point? Well, with most solar-powered cars, the batteries are the trick here. Traveling up to 30 miles is pretty good, even if you’re going rather slow, it makes for a nice scenic ride along some country roads and could be used by eco-conscious rangers to cart around a national park.
Of course there are other solar cars out there, but many of these have been created to decrease drag and weight as much as possible in order to reach speeds of 42 miles/hour. These too still use a battery, but for everyday use, they are not nearly as comfortable looking as this little car.
While there currently isn’t any way yet to run cars completely from solar photovoltaic cells, technology is slowly progressing forward and more and more companies are focusing on hybrid cars and creating solar charging stations for the onboard batteries. Will there ever be solar powered cars that do not require batteries? Probably not likely in the near future.
