EEVblog 1480 - Lightyear Zero Solar Powered Electric Car 

Comparing the consumption of your slow drive through Sydney, with the Lightyear highway driving consumption at 110 km/h....man, that doesn't give me much faith in the accuracy of your overall reporting... Why don't you film your average consumption at 110km/h...I bet that is at least 15kw/h

Look up the Aptera

Since you can't drive the Lightyear for direct comparison the only apples to apples comparison is rated range using the same standards.

if they pack more panels in the roof, like a satellite , they can triple the surface of the panel . When it is parked it opens the extra panels

Apples to apples the only real comparison is WLTP to WLTP though and this is significantly more efficient. It's -9.6- 96 Wh/km for the lightyear vs -12.3- 123 Wh/km for the Ioniq(Edit: corrected due to comment below). That is 28% better. Also, I guess their marketing material now is really pushing the solar thing, but having vaguely followed this thing for a while I always took the point to be efficiency and range with the solar angle being secondary. Clearly, this isn't a cost-effective solution, but I think you missed the mark a bit. Doing my own calculations a while ago I came to the conclusion their statements were optimistic, but not entirely unreasonable in ideal cases which is about as much as you can expect from marketing. Also, this is kind of a "sleek" package solution marketed to people with lots of money. It's never going to be the ideal or most cost-effective, but I think you were going a bit too hard on the whole price being justified by the solar claims. I think both real-world and from testing this will be the most efficient semi-normal 5-seater EV, it will be one of the longest range on the market, and it will give a not completely negligible amount of range from solar in sunny conditions. It is important to note range comes at a big cost with EVs and I'm pretty sure every single EV on the market with as much range costs over $100k USD. WLTP also isn't super close to real-world numbers most of the time, but it does seem to have things proportionally correct most of the time. Given this thing has great aerodynamics it may well improve even more vs competitors in real-world highway range which is what a lot of people worry about. Bragging about Cd probably doesn't work well for marketing to the general public though they were definitely pushing that angle before.

I should have actually used that analogy in the video, as the 47km extra range per day I calcuated works out to about the reduced range due to using my airconditioner in the IONIQ.

Don't be so cynical. It works. Just have to market it on Mercury and you can drive it as far as you want.

I am only a few minutes so far, so I have not yet got to the spoiler for the question. My guess is that if the HUD, computer and charger controls are efficient it might charge a full ev battery (the real big packs) it will take a week or two to solar roof charge the car. If the HUD and computer stays on when charging and it's not energy smart (lights and displays) then it might never charge up with real world sunlight exposure)

Back in the late nineties I worked on a solar racer team doing wiring. After looking at the design of our vehicle, I knew that fully solar cars would never become a reality. Our design was a solar array on wheels (as with all solar racers), that crammed in a single driver, no amenities, and minimal safety equipment, and even with extreme drag and weight reduction, it was barely able to keep up with the power to go 65 mph on a smooth runway, with perfect sun position and no clouds. Granted, the cells we had were only around 15% efficient, but even 100% efficient cells would struggle to provide enough power on a standard vehicle and in realistic conditions. Sunlight only provides 1kW per square meter. Our solar racer ran on approximately as much power as a hand-held hair drier.

@@EEVblog Also the driving in Netherlands, famous because most of the country is flat, and a 100m hill is a mountain.

Yep, good point, I should have mentioned the aircon.

Acutally this is a proper se of solar. Keep the car somewhat cool if you are forced to park in the sun. We had a rental car on Tennerifa once that had a solar panel on the roof. When it was parked in the sun some fan was running, circulating air through the car. This kept the temperature in the 40-45°C range rather than 60-70°C, which was nice. The solar panel was about 30*60cm though, not 1m² Pretty sure this did not cost a quater million either.

@@fabianfeilcke7220 I've got one of those crappy window mounted solar fans for cars, and as shitty as it is, even those work when parked in the sun. I used to have this great plan to install a solar panel in my old 89 Honda to power the internal fan, but never got from the idea phase. I don't even want to try with a modern car because there's so much plastic crap everywhere and electrical things running 24/7.

@@fabianfeilcke7220 I think I remember seeing this as an option on the Prius at some point - use free energy to ventilate the cabin a little so you don't have to spend as much cooling it later. Solar awnings over parking lots also similarly reduce the demand for AC. And they don't need any ludicrous new engineering, just solar freaking roofs. Why does every tech startup need to either claim to invent some borderline impossible physics or appeal to some pointless expensive tastes? Isn't "I took this technology that's been an affordable commodity for years already (i.e. readily available with zero risk) and came up with a clever place to install it, and look at all the synergistic benefits!" just as good of a business pitch?

I found this on the weekend - I was running a camp fridge in my car from a large AGM, and solar charging the AGM at the same time, to get some charge, I had to park the car in the sun of course, then the increased cycling of the fridge negated the charging.....

We had the solar panel option on our 1st gen LEAF - it's a tiny patch on the rear spoiler and might be able to keep the 12V battery from going flat due to self-discharge... *if* it wasn't actually going from the garage at home to underground parking at work every day..

Likewise Tesla mentioned a solar tub cover for the cybertruck and said "maybe 5 miles a day"

@@koma-k Yeah. That one was literally for keeping the 12v battery from going flat from lack of use. It's basically to counter the extra drain all the gadgets use (particularly the Carwings thing). It's something like a 3 or 5 watt panel.

Ford is supposed to be offering solar on one of their EVs too... I can't remember the details. Just that it was basically wank factor and maybe free airconditioning power while it's parked.

Another thought, even if there was a truly amazing break in technology and a car could fully charge in sunlight, that won't help people who part their cars in garages! We haven't used outdoor parking in decades! Except when shopping and doing errands, of course. Our cars have lasted much longer than our others that were out in the elements 24/7. Some genius needs to break the laws of thermal dynamics and invent a charger that runs on magnet power. LOL JUST KIDDING, that ain't happening.

please insert the tag to your post? 😆

Solar freekin roadways. What a great idea.

Hehehe

Agreed. On the car is a nice bonus if it costs little to integrate it, but it doesn't change the game in any way.

or, you know, just put a panel in the trunk and put it on the roof when parked..

Or solar carport, much cheaper to develop (as in off the shelf modules on sale already) and sell, plus you can brand it better with logo for the vehicle. Just needs to have the vehicle charger be able to accept varying supply via the standard EV connection if free standing, and you want no electrical power connection.

If the solar panel on the car was cheaper than paying for the electricity it provides, why wouldn't you do it? Its a win win, more green energy, less cost over lifetime. Will it ever support all vehicle usecases? No, never. That's not the point though. Also, there is no reason to not also put solar panels on your house, as at the moment in most countries, this also saves you money over time. It's not an or-or situation, it's and-and. You could argue, if I spend 1000$ on the solar roof, and save 1200$ over time, or $1000 on my house installation, and save 2000$ over time, I should spend my 1000$ on my house. It sounds like a sound argument, but in practice you are just cheating yourself out of 200$ by not doing both (fictive figures btw.). But what if I spend the second 1000$ to put more panels on my house? Sure, but that only works if you get paid for energy delivered to the grid. In the netherlands this is already being reduced, since during solar peak hours, there is more supply than demand... no one wants that energy at that specific time of day.... So there is a limit to what you can save by putting solar on your house, and it is getting more interesting to use as much of the solar you generate for your own consumption, that way every kwh is worth the most, namely the cost of a kwh out of the grid. Turns out using solar panels for your own energy consumption during the day is not that trivial because most people are not home during the day. Would it not be great to use your massive battery in your EV to store that solar power for yourself? If only the solar panels could move with the battery when you drive to work.... Ultimately, these issue will be partially solved by switching to a smart grid (e.g. charging vehicles when renewable are plenty, and using energy in vehicles to power the grid when renewables are not available. But we are very far from that reality even in the developed countries, let alone undeveloped ones.

​@@Tvocke FFS I'm not reading all of that. What do you suppose the cost of a solar body panel is if you're involved in a slight fender bender? If the car cost a quarter of a million I'm not saving diddly schitt because I don't spend more than 3000 a year on my car, tires, brakes, and gas combined. A 20,000 dollar tesla battery pack will go bad before I recoup the costs. A real savings would be to build something like 4th GEN Nuclear plants. Because I'm not going to retrofit a schitty 1960's house that wasn't built right and will never be right! Nor do I want to cut down a bunch of fking trees and remove the only privacy and shade I have.

And the worst part is that they are marginal solutions at best. In real life they just don't work - you always need to have spare power to burnin order to compensate for all the inevitable issues and limitation of your technology. What we would really benefit from is a way to burn our fuel more efficiently. On a highway modern diesels are almost as good as it is going to get but for city traffic electric power is clearly much better. So we just need to find a way to generate and store electricity with enough power and good efficiency in a car. That way would require much less batteries, none of that stupid plug in charging or solar stuff, and be much cheaper to use than a conventional car. Of course it still means increased cost because you will either need quite a complex gearbox that would be able to connect the ICE and the electric motor/generator with the drivetrain in multiple combinations or a huge amount of fuel cells with all its multiple filters, airguides, pipelines, valves and fans. But at least it should be much more convenient and overall usable than a purely battery based solution.

@@ParabolicLabs My model 3 is saving me ~$800 nzd/month over my previous car. How is that for a return on investment? Sure let’s keep burning the oil that is so much more environmentally friendly.

@@timstreeter9795 My IONIQ saves me around $3000/year in petrol, assuming my solar system is paid off and is givign me "free" excess energy. BUt even if I charged form the grid, it would still be about 1/4 the petrol cost.

@@ParabolicLabs here petrol is over £2 a litre Roi on a 30k EV is relatively short esp with 7p pkwh night rate electricity or like me 0p pkwh in the summer, my 2012 and 2016 EVs have now paid for their selves in saved fule, parking and tax costs

@@EEVblog "assuming my solar system is paid off" that's a very BIG assumption

Physics and logic are the limiting factors: The problem is that most cars drive in areas with a long winter / mud season / monsoon so lugging around the extra weight of the cells all year round eats up all the "benefits" very, very quickly. That's why "solar races" usually take place in mid-summer or near the equator and never near Oslo in winter!

It is all great until you make the realization it takes dozens of kilowatts to hunk all that metal around, and regardless of what amazing solar panels you might have, the fact of solar irradiance puts a hard and low limit on you. Even fairly small cars are like a ton of metal to drive 1/5 of useful cargo. And cramming additional batteries to make it electric only makes it worse. It is not all that bad tho, on a good sunny day the sun can give you several times the power an average human can physically generate. You could go pretty fast with something lightweight, it would have to be closer to a bike than to a car in weight. I'd take a "solar/combustion/battery/pedals" hybrid version of that. You can go a lot longer on the charge, you can go on solar only, you can help by pedaling it if you feel like getting some workout, and even a tiny ic engine and fuel tank can get you far. If we can cut all that dead weight of the legacy automobile.

More effective to have a carport with panels on top, and plug in the car during the day. Cooler vehicle, and also longer life, as it is not sitting baking all the plastic parts all day long, needing AC to run to cool the battery, and also all the heat that has to be removed when driving off. Pl;us panels with grid tie can also help power the house as well, and bonus you can charge at night.

If you have no way to charge your car at home then adding solar to a car like a model 3 is great if your parking spot was already in the sun. Ok this only works for a small group of people but that’s OK. 200w solar panel in a parking spot that gets 2000 hours of sun per year is 400kwh of electricity per year. My tesla uses 2300kwh a year. That’s 17% fewer stops to the public charger. And 17% cost savings. Probably not worth it to some people. But definitely worth it to some. Now double the efficiency of the car and increase the solar to 300w and you are covering 50% of you charging with solar.

@@ecospider5 A 200W panel doesn't generate 200W for every hour of insolation even if it's perfectly aligned ie 2 axis tracker. Throw in conversion losses from the controller/charger/cells etc panel temperature, intermittent shading from clouds and for most domestic installs you would be lucky to get 50% of nominal rating over the standard 7 hour solar day. Panel ratings are based on 1000 W/m2 irradiance at 25C panel temperature which are conditions rarely met in the real world.

thinking about it, for me, it potentially solves one major obstacle for not having an electric car: i have no place to charge it. The self-charging rate seems plentiful for my needs, BUT! it will only work if the battery has a massive range. I drive very rarely, but in somewhat active bursts. And of course, i won't buy it cause it's way way waaaay too expensive for me to afford... i'm just considering it in principle.

this is just money making model for them they are planing to launch 35k usd solar car on the way just like tesla

Yeah, should have mentioned the aircon

@@EEVblog The claim is _extra_ range, not 50 clicks free at 160km/h + aircon daily right? I think it's fair to leave aircon out of the consideration.

@@freakyjason477 Why is it fair? In many parts of the world people will be using some kind of climate control in their vehicle. Because of how vehicles like to heat up, if it's not winter, it'll likely be aircon...

@@EEVblog Aircon aside, something I just thought of: panel efficiency loss from the heat of the sun. In a rooftop installation, there's generally either an air gap or some kind of cooling system to deal with that. In a car, 1 of those options basically *can not exist* while the other is extremely impractical and somewhat expensive to implement.

@@InfernosReaper Just saying that the claim of 'up to 70km extra range' seems valid if it's doable under ideal circumstances even if it doesn't include aircon. They probably didn't say 'up to 7kWh extra charge' cause that'd be better testable, plus everyone using aircon wouldn't get that. If it's not the heat that requires it, then the cold sapping battery performance and lack of sun for charging would do you in ;)

Jup, the panel is actually not 1 panel but a lot of small panels in parallel with tiny efficient converters. End result is when a part is shaded, you only really lose a little bit of output from that section of the car, whereas on regular solar you limit the entire array. Pretty cool stuff

@@Tvocke yeah it was pretty cool in like 1912 or so, when the first "solar powered" car came out with like 10k+ individual panels... Pretty cool stuff huh?

upside down solar freaking roadways on the sun. Kickstarter here we come.

They charge this for the first prototypes, they aim for 30k euro I think if I remember correctly

@@dannygrob they might charge, but the car sure barely will

@@Patmccalk At that price I'd rather just drive a steam engine powered by burning money.

@@dannygrob exactly. It’s expensive to introduce a new car brand, let alone with these tech. Australians fail to introduce the Holen, an ford based car. They still promote and heavily harvest coal but blame Dutch superior solar technology and their attempt to set up a car company.

Not into boats, but that would be interesting. If a viewer in Sydney has access to one I'd love to take a look.

@@EEVblog They are based in the Mediterranean and very expensive so that's highly unlikely, we rented a silent 55 it worked quite well, solar panels changed at around 9-10kW/h , it used about 6kW/h at around 5 knots , If we had the money we would buy their earlier Solarwave 64,😀

I was indeed being generous.

Need to take in to consideration how efficient the car is though. Without aircon you might as well be able to do 20km with 2kWh (100Wh/km) going 70-80km/h.

@@rkan2 That seems a bit suspicious on the math. My 300 lb 50cc scooter produces 2.9 KW and can do 40 mph.A car weights around ten times as much as that, so no 2KW won't drive a car at 40 mph.

@@jhoughjr1 Your math is off, I never said 2kW ;)

@@rkan2 But my point still stands.

and that was ages ago with really inefficient panels. The Japanese are laggards who want to burn fossil fuels or use non existent hydrogen fool sells.

I wouldn't dare buy one of these. No matter where I park (and I always park away from other vehicles at the far side of the car park park) some a-hole parks right next to me. If I got one of these some a-hole in an RV would park next to me and put me in the shade.

I suspect anyone who buys this won't care, they are buying it to virtue signal and brag they drive a solar powered car, they don't car about maximising the extra performance.

Imagine, you parked it in the open sun and leave to attend for your matters, but then a big truck is parked besides and blocks the light...

Not really, the panel is not 1 series connections of cells like on household installations, but a lot of little panels in parallel with their own efficient converter. So you would only loose the output of 1 of those sections.

And the paint will start peeling within a year or two.

Up to 1 Gbps of internet speed

But the point was that you'll never get up to 70km. Not even in the best conditions. So this marketing is bullshit.

Yeah, it does provide less time needed to charge. Plus, you can probably keep it charged just by doing 5 minute charging when you stop at a charging station and take a small break to go to the toilet and buy some water/snacks.

In the full extended video I show some additional calcs that almost gets them to the 70km/day extra range, so it's not a stretch to say it's possible on a perfect day.

@@EEVblog was that a perfect day in Amsterdam?

They use the classic "up to" semantic language that cable internet and cell data providers use for speed advertisements. Only it is less shady the way internet providers use it. Because when the internet provider has the service working properly you do normally get close to or faster than the advertised speeds out of the cable modem or cell phone. The reason they advertise this way is because your speeds will vary with the traffic load on the network and will not necessarily be exactly the advertised speed. Essentially cable companies advertise the average or most common speeds you will see in real world conditions. This car company seems to be using this language instead to advertise the maximum possible performance as if you will get that most of the time, or on average. When in actuality the average performance will be significantly lower than the advertised numbers. It is definitely advertising that is going to mislead those who are not paying attention to the fine details or those who do not know enough basic technical info about solar panels limitations. A lot of people.

I think people need to realize 3 things: the people who started this company actually build solar cars at universities before starting a company (you know the ones who race in Australia, etc.) which actually can do the things mentioned. People should look up the Stella series solar cars. It does work. What I am surprised by is how they said 50 km instead of something like 32 km, which is a much better fit for the average driver in the Netherlands (where they are and Amsterdam is). And if you have a price of 250 000 you can use really light weight materials (that regular cars don't use). Very few are going to be build, so this is closer to buying a concept car than a regular car. So the whole thing is still in development to make a more generally available car. And I think the buyers will understand this.

You can still charge it like a regular EV. Are you saying all EVs need regular flatbed pickup? Or could it be it's like that to deal with curbs and speed bumps and such?

for 250k it better come with dynamic suspension

Ideal conditions like midday sun in Spain, like in their video? Solar panels on the car is just a bad idea. Expensive too. I don't doubt these guys are smart. Maybe they should just focus on their hyper-efficient propulsion instead? They're making promises those solar panels can't keep for the average intended user, an EV in a city far from the equator. That could cause potentially fatal damage to their reputation. People online love to focus on negatives.

Well, for that, you only need a much smaller panel, even in winter! I have one of 80W peek on the roof of my van and it well keeps the batteries charged with a lot of surplus so I don't need to drive for months and the batteries never drop under 90% full to be fully full a day further. And yes every thing is powered even including the window-control and remote-control + backup for the radio and GPS-locator. And even standing partly under trees and I almost never clean the panel since it is on the roof beeing green...

Or you could just get a new battery. A normal battery shouldn't discharge from sitting, unless of course its an old piece of shit.

@@jhoughjr1 lol you don't own a car right? EVERY lead acid battery will go flat if you don't drive for a couple of weeks. Go on holidays. Come back. Oops flat battery.

@@nedflanders4158 So what is the battery powering during this down time? If the electrical system is proper in the car it won't drain if not being used. Don't have a car but a scooter which has a much smaller lead acid battery than in a car and have left it for a month without it dying.

@@jhoughjr1 that's it, a scooter is not the same as a car. There are parasitic drains in every car. The stereo being one. Because they cannot retain their settings without power. Alarms etc will also cause a small drain. Only becomes an issue when not driving for a week or more. The electrical system is designed to have that small drain. Go drive past car dealerships. Often see the cars in show rooms have trickle charges attached to keep this cars batteries always topped up and ready for sale/test drive.

@JM Coulon im not talking about hypersonic missiles. geez.

I think taxi in your scenario works better

@ probably yes but in every scenario having 3k dollar toyata and lifetime fuel is cheaper and better.

That's right, hey, what if we put the solar in the roadways! ;-)

It is a proof of concept and of course too expensive with 250k, but that can be less expensive in the future, like was mentioned in the video. And don't overlook the extra efficiency: motors in wheels -> more choices in chassis (no motor) -> better drag coefficient -> smaller batteries -> weight gain. Could also be useful without solar roof. The founder (or some of them) of this company have won the solar race in Australia (as students) multiple times. We'll see what impact this company will have, but the focus is on the correct things IMHO. Not on high maximum speed for example.

uhum

It is! Say your biz is green get govt grants and money from people that failed science class

more GreenWashing! This has always been a scam.

They also claim a base price of $26,000 for the 25KWh/250 mile version (up to $46,000 for the longest range 100KWh/1000 mile version). No idea if they'll really be able to hit those prices but if they manage to release anything at all it's going to be a hell of a lot cheaper than a Lightyear.

Have they even gone into production yet? Every time I see a review of this thing it’s always the same guy driving and never the reviewer and they drive at about 15mph. Yet people have put deposits down on this thing.

Plus for emergencies you could just toss some solar panels in your trunk.

@@woutdezeeuw1604 While that sounds like a good idea, I think in practice it might be a bit more complicated than just plugging the solar panels in.

I'll take that as a compliment.

In my area, it is very rare to have an underground parking lot. So it depends where you live.