'World's First Off-Road Solar SUV' Just Drove Across Morocco (cnn.com) 82
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Zero-emission cars are soaring in popularity but running an electric vehicle is next to impossible in places with limited charging infrastructure. Stella Terra could change that. The khaki-green SUV uses solar panels on its sloping roof to charge its electric battery, meaning it can drive long distances powered entirely by the sun. Built by a team of students at Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE), "the world's first off-road solar-powered vehicle" could help connect remote areas "where roads are less developed and energy grids are not as reliable," and assist with emergency aid and deliveries, says Thieme Bosman, events manager for the team.
The team tested the vehicle in Morocco earlier this month, driving more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) between the country's northern coast and the Sahara Desert in the south. "Morocco has a huge variety of landscapes and different surfaces in quite a short distance," says Bosman, adding that the car was tested "on every type of surface that a car like this could encounter." The road-legal car has a top speed of 145 kilometers (90 miles) per hour. On a sunny day, its battery range is around 710 kilometers (441 miles) on roads, and around 550 kilometers (342 miles) off-road, depending on the surface. In cloudy conditions, the team estimates the range could be 50 kilometers less. Bosman noted that the vehicle had proved to be one-third more efficient than expected on the trip, and that its lightweight design made it less liable to get stuck on rugged terrain, and put less stress on its suspension.
"Where the SUV market currently innovates on the previous models, we really start from scratch and design everything ourselves," says Bosman. Minimizing the vehicle's weight was essential, and the team of 22 students focused on making every element ultra-efficient. At just 2,645 pounds (1,200 kilograms), Stella Terra weighs around 25% less than the average mid-sized SUV. The aerodynamic design also reduces drag and uses "lightweight and robust" composite materials to cut weight, says Bob van Ginkel, technical manager for Stella Terra. "(One of) the benefits of the solar panels on top is that we can have a much smaller battery because we are charging while driving," van Ginkel adds. Bosman and his peers hope their concept SUV could be mass produced in the near future. "We aim to also inspire not only everyday people, but also the automotive industry, the Ford and Chryslers of the world, to think again about their designs and to innovate faster than they currently do," says Bosman.
"It's up to the market now, who have the resources and the power to make this change and the switch to more sustainable vehicles."
The team tested the vehicle in Morocco earlier this month, driving more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) between the country's northern coast and the Sahara Desert in the south. "Morocco has a huge variety of landscapes and different surfaces in quite a short distance," says Bosman, adding that the car was tested "on every type of surface that a car like this could encounter." The road-legal car has a top speed of 145 kilometers (90 miles) per hour. On a sunny day, its battery range is around 710 kilometers (441 miles) on roads, and around 550 kilometers (342 miles) off-road, depending on the surface. In cloudy conditions, the team estimates the range could be 50 kilometers less. Bosman noted that the vehicle had proved to be one-third more efficient than expected on the trip, and that its lightweight design made it less liable to get stuck on rugged terrain, and put less stress on its suspension.
"Where the SUV market currently innovates on the previous models, we really start from scratch and design everything ourselves," says Bosman. Minimizing the vehicle's weight was essential, and the team of 22 students focused on making every element ultra-efficient. At just 2,645 pounds (1,200 kilograms), Stella Terra weighs around 25% less than the average mid-sized SUV. The aerodynamic design also reduces drag and uses "lightweight and robust" composite materials to cut weight, says Bob van Ginkel, technical manager for Stella Terra. "(One of) the benefits of the solar panels on top is that we can have a much smaller battery because we are charging while driving," van Ginkel adds. Bosman and his peers hope their concept SUV could be mass produced in the near future. "We aim to also inspire not only everyday people, but also the automotive industry, the Ford and Chryslers of the world, to think again about their designs and to innovate faster than they currently do," says Bosman.
"It's up to the market now, who have the resources and the power to make this change and the switch to more sustainable vehicles."
And the USA, Canada, Aus, NZ (Score:3)
And all of south america are all illegally (if you take a historic view) occupied territories of the original native peoples there.
So what?
Times change and lands for right or wrong get taken over by other peoples. After a while the historic ownership becomes irrelevant except for history classes.
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The difference is that Western Sahara is literally not under full Moroccan control at the moment. Now if they succeeded in genociding the natives and annexed everything a hundred or two years ago maybe it would be similar.
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Incorrect. Original native peoples do not exist in those locations. They have been long exterminated by the conquerors, who were in turn conquered and exterminated several times over.
So by historic view, current territories are legitimate as they have done far less objectionable things than conquerors from which those lands were conquered in the last conquests to get those lands. This is why in many locations, smaller local governments allied with Spanish and Portugese against the main empire in their area.
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Original native peoples do not exist in those locations. They have been long exterminated by the conquerors, who were in turn conquered and exterminated several times over.
In some of those locations, that's true. In others, it ain't. Even in Mexico there are still tribes of the "original" residents.
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You mean like the Amazon uncontacted tribes? They're not original to those areas. They were the losers of the wars that got pushed out of more viable lands they originally inhabited by the conqueror civilizations like Maya and Aztec but managed to not get enslaved for ritual sacrifice by the likes of Maya and Aztec.
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"Original native peoples do not exist in those locations"
Yeah right. Go tell all the tribes in north america, the aborginies in australia and the moaris in new zealand that they don't exist.
"Do not bring up history as an argument when you know nothing about it."
Pot -> kettle.
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Those aren't the original people. Those are the people who killed and conquered those that killed and conquered, those that killed and conquered.... those that killed and conquered the original people.
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Really? Who who was in australia before the aborigines? Who was in NZ before the Moaris?
Clearly you're an expert on this so please tell us.
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Other tribes. There's a reason they have weapons that work really well against other humans.
Same for one of the youngest if not the youngest civilizations, the Maori. They're about a thousand years old. Also known for constant fighting against other tribes so they can eat each other. Because they are cannibals. And that is the civilization with by far the best claim to the "original peoples in the area" claim, as they came to live where they are fairly recently by historic standards. Unlike anyone in Americ
Offroad? (Score:3, Funny)
Wow some people actually drive their jacked up studio apartments off road? I thought they were just for picking up groceries.
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Yeah, they do! And now, they can brag and do some virtue signaling by saying their cherished SUV is solar!
More realistically, the whole TFA is just more propaganda flavored shit. You drive the SUV for 12 hours and let it recharge for 120 hours at a bare minimum with the solar panels (maybe for 2 weeks) since it can't recharge with no sunlight.
Re:Offroad? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fix your driveway. It's cheaper.
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I'm not sure how you can change a driveway that is only 20 feet long and rises 5 feet from the road to your garage entry point. Assuming that you actually own your residence...
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Re: Offroad? (Score:2)
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SUVs aren't good at offroading. They're not designed for it because that's not how people use them. To make them somewhat useful in a city, the wheel base is extended. This means it can't climb much of a gradient at all. They're high center of gravity, combined with their weight, and their long wheel base means they tip and flip easily. That's why they're very unsafe on the road, both to the occupants and to everyone else around them. You would be better off with a station wagon. That's what you actually ne
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carboard (Score:1)
RC car makes trip, does nothing useful or innovative
Great for apartment owners (Score:2)
One of the big problems with traditional electric cars is that they and of assume you have easy access to nightly charging at your house.
It will be a long, long time before anything even close to that exists at apartment buildings, so a solar car that could actually get a practical charge in a day could be really useful for that case.
Of course, in the real world you have questions of durability and how well that would stand up to vandalism. But, a good start...
If you are wondering how an apartment owner co
Re: Great for apartment owners (Score:2)
it can fill a niche for some people I suppose. But my car doesnt spend much time on open air lots. Most cars stay parked in parking decks where only the top floor will see significant light time.
I imagine we will see more and more grocery stores with electric plug in stations. Most big box store seem to have some at this point. That's probably where people will charge. Actually at my emoyers, all parking decks have some electric chargers.
Re: Great for apartment owners (Score:4, Informative)
Most cars stay parked in parking decks where only the top floor will see significant light time.
That's your small sample. In my sample, most cars stay parked outside, directly under the sky. Actually that's the case for the huge majority of cars around here (EU).
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My car is parked on the street 90% of the time.
Still, there's no way I could rely on solar charging, if for no other reason but that it seems to be cloudy like 9 months of the year here. Then the parking spot is in the shadow of the building next to it for half of the day. And sometimes it's in a garage.
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One of the big problems with traditional electric cars is that they and of assume you have easy access to nightly charging at your house.
That's because you need a lot of power to charge them in a reasonable amount of time. Take something like the Chevy Bolt for instance, it gets roughly 4 miles per kW. The average workday commute in the USA is approximately 41 miles, so that's 10.25kW used each day. A 2.5kW PV system will generate about that much electricity per day in a sunny location, but the catch is, that many panels aren't going to fit on the roof of a car.
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Yes, you need to really maximize efficiency and battery area to make it feasible. Something like the Aptera seems to be on the edge of making that work under ideal circumstances (parked outside in a desert all day). Not saying practical or worthwhile but math mostly seems to check out. Any worse efficiency than this and it's completely pointless.
I do think more people should be driving efficient cars and not giant 3-ton monstrosities but it doesn't seem like that's gonna happen. Like this SUV thing. Surpris
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I thought so too, but as it turns out, it is not a big problem at all. I charge my EV at work once or twice a week. There is also a reasonable amount of public chargers.
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Solar car cannot get meaningful range anywhere but in a tiny portion of extremely high solar intensity areas. Sahara is one of the few areas on the planet where this is true.
Try this in your typical German town, and you'll be lucky to get 50 kilometers out of this thing, because when you have a tenth of power generation capability from the same solar panel, it's the tiny battery on this thing that will have to do the heavy lifting, and that's about all it has.
If you look at https://globalsolaratlas.info/ [globalsolaratlas.info] yo
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It has a 60kWh battery so not tiny by any means. The solar part is a gimmick/niche use only of course.
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The solar part is a gimmick/niche use only of course.
They'll be the only things moving after the pockyclipse.
Re: Great for apartment owners (Score:2)
Oh well then you'd better let them know they're wasting their time.
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What do you mean? They have a great grift going. It's certainly not wasting your time if you manage to get a lot of rich companies throw money at you.
Re: Great for apartment owners (Score:2)
Well then you'd better give those people the benefit of your vast wisdom. You've clearly got it all worked out.
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They clearly know. Why else would they select that exact area to do their PR stunt?
Re: Great for apartment owners (Score:2)
I don't know why you would test a prototype under ideal conditions first. Why do you think they would do such a bizarre thing?
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Prototype of what? Surely you don't think that solar power vehicles are a new things that needs to be prototyped on the topic of "it works in ideal conditions"?
Because we already had prototype of a plane doing that exact thing, and flying over Atlantic. A decade ago. Google "Solar Impulse". They showed what was possible and under what conditions for mobility on solar.
We're not prototyping to figure out if it works. It does. The problem is "it works only in very specific conditions". Running it under those c
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So in other words, they stacked the deck in their favor to get the result that they wanted to report.
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It's more than that. They themselves say that battery was there just to smooth over the peak consumption and at most times the car was driven, solar panels were sufficient to keep it driving.
In other words, they hit approximate parity of power intake vs power usage. That is the minimal realistic requirement for solar panel powered vehicle. Their trick was to make car as light as possible, to the point where in spite of driving slowly, they managed to break the suspension once according to their own story an
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Unlike popular believe, in most countries, especially what westerners would consider poor, vandalism is extremely rare.
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Only 621 miles (Score:2)
This doesn't seem all that impressive when you realize just swapping in LiFePO2 batteries into a Tesla increases its range to 900 miles. Such an "experimental" vehicle could've crossed Morocco and almost halfway back again on a single charge, sun not required.
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Seems like the OP just made it up, the car has a 60kWh battery so in line with all other modern EVs including Teslas: https://newatlas.com/automotiv... [newatlas.com]
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This doesn't seem all that impressive when you realize just swapping in LiFePO2 batteries into a Tesla increases its range to 900 miles.
Nope. If it swapped it's battery into the Tesla it would have had a fraction of the range. Tesla has a much larger battery pack. If you want real range, take the Tesla battery and put it into this thing which is lighter, more efficient, and has on-road charging capability.
But we get it, you think the only innovation in the world comes from Musk almighty.
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This doesn't seem all that impressive when you realize just swapping in LiFePO2 batteries into a Tesla increases its range to 900 miles.
Sir, are you on crack?
50% of Tesla vehicles sold in the US have LiFePo4 batteries. (LiFePO2 is a typo.) The vehicles with NMC batteries have more range.
Re:Fishy solar figures (Score:5, Insightful)
It is just a lie - as are most article summaries. The interesting metric is how much electricity was provided by the solar panels vs the onboard fully loaded battery. Hopefully we can guess. On a cloudy day, the car receives 1/3rd of the power it receives on a sunny day, as you pointed out. The summary says it's around 50km less. This means the battery provided 1/3rd more, so 75km. The battery provided 925 km and the solar panels 75km.
In other words, when your battery is out, it will take 13 sunny days to recharge it to 100% with the solar panel. (That's assuming the trip took a whole day). Another way to look at it is that you have 75km autonomy per sunny day and 25km per cloudy days. In Morocco.
That's not negligible, but that's not a lot either. Most places on earth are not nearly as sunny as Morocco, so it's even less there.
Re: Fishy solar figures (Score:2)
Now that's a tiny, unimportant detail that the article failed to mention! It makes you believe that the car ran only on self-generated power when it's not the case.
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The solar panels aren't the interesting bit, the extremely efficient drivetrain is.
EV drivetrains have been getting more efficient every year, but this seems to be a significant jump. The shape of the car is interesting too. Combined with self driving we could see some interesting cargo vehicles appearing in the future.
Re:Fishy solar figures (Score:4, Informative)
> The solar panels aren't the interesting bit, the extremely efficient drivetrain is.
The article does not contain any information required to evaluate that, though.
How big is the battery?
What was the start and end SoC for the battery?
What is the KW rating of the solar panels?
How long did the total trip take?
What was the average km/kWh (or Wh/100 km)?
Okay they drove 1000km without on-grid recharging. I can do that in my EV too; just bolt a pair of 300W solar panels to the roof. Sure it'll probably take over a month, but for all we know so did theirs.
I tried to do some lateral reading but I've not found any technical specs for the vehicle. Nothing but university PR department fluff...
=Smidge=
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Want to test your solar powered car? (Score:2)
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When those lake effect snows hit, you're not driving anywhere!
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EVs are very good in snow too. No gears to worry about, and very precise control over torque. For dedicated off-road vehicles they can even have a motor per wheel, rather than a diff, giving even more control and very precise sensing of wheel rotation speed to avoid slipping.
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What are you talking about? That's the best time to drive! Driving in snow is fun, fun, fun!
"...uses "lightweight and robust" composite materials..."
Hope the airbags are robust. Could be more of a skating experience rather than driving. Weight matters.
How many days (Score:2)
Re: How many days (Score:2)
Dunno. The interesting bit would be how many kwh it can charge in a day.
You could say its the only thing that matters, it just seems like a publicity stunt because say if it can charge like 5kwh per day.. And thats pretty generous. It would still be interesting but the presentation is as if it was just driving under solar endlessly which makes it sound like a typical bullshit project.
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So a hotel reservation and plans to leave Thursday morning drive 400+ miles from Minnesota to Nebraska attend a visitation, get a good nights sleep, go to the funeral Friday morning and then drive back so the wife can make a concert with friends.
Presently, a roadtrip in an EV does require planning for your charging pit stops. It's not really a dealbreaker if your household has multiple vehicles and you can just use an ICE car for longer trips.
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RAV4 Hibread Toyota (Score:2)
Already done with a Skoda Enyaq; 4x4electric.com (Score:1)
This was already done by a Dutch couple; Renske Cox & Maarten van Pel, 4x4electric.
They used a Skoda Enyaq 80, see https://4x4electric.com/ [4x4electric.com]
Check out the website for all info on the car, charging solar vs socket, all kind of data.
PR Stunt (Score:3)
As someone has already highlighted, after covering a distance of over 1000 kilometers, the solar panels contributed approximately 75 kilometers of range, while the batteries provided the remaining 925 kilometers.
It's worth noting that the Toyota Prius already offers an option with a solar roof, claiming an average daily range of 8 kilometers. This aligns with the observations in the article, although the specific duration and weather conditions of the journey are unknown. Additionally, the Prius boasts a superior Cx [wikipedia.org] compared to the mentioned SUV.
There are limited avenues to enhance the efficacy of solar roofs:
- Improving solar panel efficiency: While incremental gains are possible, this technology is relatively mature, and substantial improvements are unlikely. Furthermore, optimizing panel orientation while the vehicle is in motion is challenging.
- Lighter vehicles with improved drag coefficients: Shifting to lighter, more aerodynamic cars could significantly increase solar range. A 700kg car, as opposed to the hefty 3-ton vehicles, could potentially triple the solar range to around 30 kilometers daily, covering a substantial portion of European daily commutes.
A third approach involves enlarging the solar roof to accommodate more panels. However, this could lead to larger, heavier vehicles with poorer drag coefficients. The logical continuation of this idea is to put the solar panels not on the car, but on your house roof for instance. I know, crazy idea. For apartment dwellers, relying on a decarbonized grid (nuclear, hydro, solar, wind) for charging is also a viable option.
In essence, having solar panels on car roofs may be more of a marketing gimmick. The real transformative impact lies in transitioning to a decarbonized energy grid.
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Whoever drove that thing (Score:3)
Whoever drove that thing must have the abuse tolerance of a pro rally driver. I bet that was not a fun trip!
Bad reporting (Score:2)
I mean, it is CNN after all but there is no information in the post. It reads like an advert for some company.
So what is the time to complete its 1000 km journey, with a range of only a few 100 km per day it seems like there would be a lot of downtime. What is its payload capacity, how many people were on this trip, did they bring food and water for 4 people or was it more like a Dakar support stops every leg, what is lightweight, will it survive a crash. Seems like important information for things that hav
Sun block (Score:2)
talking dog (Score:3)
A talking dog is not newsworthy because of what it says, but rather that it talks at all.
Stacking the deck (Score:2)
"Minimizing the vehicle's weight was essential" Well, yeah. That vehicle is a 1000 lbs lighter than a normal SUV not including payload. Payload means passengers and gear. And what happens when this vehicle bottoms out on the battery pack? I'll bet that they removed all the skid plates to save weight.
worthless deceptive article (Score:1)
Let's now repeat the test starting at 8am with dead batteries. Range would likely be about 40 miles. It appears to be using solar as a range extender, not a primary source. I could be wrong but cant find anything that would equate to such a breakthru for a true solar car.
That's no SUV (Score:2)