Martijn Lammers — Co-founder and CSO
We think of the 20th century as the years that granted mobility to everyone. If you think about it, though, driving didn’t actually change much after it moved from plaything of the wealthy to middle-class signifier. Your car may have more gadgets and better steering, but your driving experience isn’t that different from your parents’ or grandparents’. You face the same obstacles and deal with the same logistics.
We don’t even notice tracking the status of our gas tank, but many motorists can’t picture going on holiday in an electric car
The steady rise of electric vehicles since the turn of the 21st century has started to change that. We’re not just thinking about how we can fight our addiction to fossil fuels; we’re starting to imagine how the whole experience of driving and car ownership could be different.
The hitch in this growing popularity is the sense of an entirely new type of planning. We don’t even notice tracking the status of our gas tank, but many motorists can’t picture going on holiday in an electric car. What if you end somewhere without a charging infrastructure? Or you have to wait forty minutes every three hundred kilometers to charge your car?
Enter the next revolution in mobility. Soon, we won’t just be driving fuel-free cars but ones that charge themselves with sunlight. It’s going to fundamentally change our (driving) lives.
Parking is recharging
Imagine being psyched to get the sunny parking spaces that other drivers avoid. While traditional car drivers avoid leaving their car in the sun, solar car drivers soak it up! They love the spaces in the open or on the roof of a garage. It’s an ideal place to recharge. Solar panels on the roof allow it to store 12 kilometers worth of energy for every hour in the sun. Your car is soaking in free energy while you go about your day.
On a normal day commuting, you’ll often charge more than you use
Guilt-free driving
We’re all struggling with how to live our lives without destroying the environment. The solar car balances a huge part of the equation. The average combustion engine car emits 113 grams of CO2 per kilometer. In a solar car, you don’t emit any greenhouse gases. You’re driving on energy you generated yourself from the largest natural source and charging as you go. On a normal day commuting, you’ll often charge more than you use. You can plug appliances into your car and use it as a clean energy source.
Off the grid will mean something else
There’s a reason the fear of absent charging stations comes so easily to drivers’ minds. Anyone who’s taken a road trip through open, rural country knows the creeping concern that they should’ve stopped at the last filling station. Today’s idea of “off the grid” is an empty landscape with a few lone and rarely attended stations – or maybe just gas cans in the trunk. In solar cars, off the grid is anywhere the road takes you. The sun isn’t just the most powerful energy source but also the most ever-present.
Minimalism is the new must-have
The new wave of engineering is making us reassess what matters for our cars. Rather than a plethora of technical gadgets to entertain passengers or teach drivers, solar cars will focus on what matters. The car carries five people (or pets) without using harmful fuels. The car stores solar energy and uses it extremely efficiently. But what if the car could also give something back? The energy stored in the car can also be used for other household equipment. On weekends or holidays, you always have a natural source of energy at hand. The minimalism of the solar car will be the trend everyone fights to adopt.
People and countries are focusing more and more on clean mobility, so the rise of the solar car will have an enormous impact. Lightyear One: the first long-range solar car on the road will cause a tipping point towards carbon-neutral transportation. We can’t wait for its influence to be seen on the road.
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