What if you could leave the house with a car and it required no petrol diesel or any charging. Yes it is true, we will discuss about solar powered cars. It's exactly the kind of dream that people in the 90s had about electric cars.
Now 2023 we can see many electric cars on the road now but not solar powered cars. But why, because it have many difficulties and challenges. Before we can understand why solar cars making are so difficult, we need to know how solar cells first started and why it is still not possible to make solar cars at affordable prices.
• What is Solar Panel & Solar Module ?
When scientists came to know that 400,000 tons of energy is generated from the sun every second, everyone was surprised and since then, scientists started using this energy from the sun, which was used only to illuminate the earth, in various ways. In 1839, a scientist first discovered how to generate electricity from solar energy, leading to the first solar plate. A solar plate is made which is able to generate electricity at a very low cost, it is usually called a solar plate, but the one that is installed on the roof of your house is called a solar module, but the plates that are larger than the solar model are called solar panels.
• Let's talked about solar powered cars
If you have an electric car, you must have thought that if your car is equipped with solar panels, your car will always be charged by the sun, but it is not as simple as it seems.
Let's take this as an example, that what are the difficulties and challenges in building a solar car?
According to experts, these solar panels on car roofs consume space but do not provide as much benefit as they could and also cannot work if there is no sunlight, although scientists have found a solution to this problem. You may sometimes see black colored solar panels that can charge even in very low sunlight but blue colored solar panels can only be charged when they need very strong sunlight, this is why black solar panels are sold at very high prices.
In April 2022, a Netherland based start-up company, Lightyear One, built the world's first solar-powered car called 'Lightyear 0'
While developing this solar powered car, the company kept in mind that the car would be sold in places where there is not much sun light for this reason, this car is equipped with a battery that can be charged in two ways, both solar and electric.
The price of Lightyear 0 solar car is around 2 Crore rupees. Production of this solar car is expected the first units were delivered in December 2022. Its roof has 54 sq ft of double curved solar panels made of 782 monocrystalline silicon solar cells on its 5m2 roof and hood, that the car can use to generate electricity for itself. According to the company, this solar car can give a mileage of 625(388 miles) km on a single charge. And it can give mileage up to 70 km in direct solar mode.
This Lightyear 0 Solar car comes with 60 kWT battery although this car can run on very less electric city, If you drive this car for 100 kilometers at 110 miles per hour, it will consume only 10.5 kilowatts of electricity which is much less than other electric cars. But also the aerodynamics of this car are very well designed. That is why the drag of this car is very low. This lightyear 0 car is 5 meters long and the weight of this car is 1575 kg.
This solar car is more effective in hot places like India and Arab countries. You may be thinking that the Lightyear 0 car will not charge during monsoon or any rainy day but you are wrong, because its solar panel is so advanced that it continues to charge even in low light & It's also have a dedicated charging slot for fast and direct electricity charging.