The Lightyear 0 electric car can drive for months on solar battery power

Lightyear, a Dutch company, announced that it has increased its workforce to 500 people and signed contracts with a hundred contractors to launch mass production of its Lightyear 0 electric car. It’s a spacious four-door family sedan with a 5-square-meter solar panel on the hood and roof. It has a 60 kW⋅h battery, which provides 625 km of range, 4% more than the Tesla with its 82 kW⋅h battery.

The Lightyear 0 developers sacrificed speed qualities for the sake of economy – the electric car accelerates to 100 km/h in a moderate 10 seconds, and cannot go faster than 160 km/h. But this has an advantage, because thanks to a special profile and a special version of Bridgestone tires the aerodynamic drag coefficient of the car is only 0.19. This ensures energy consumption of only 10.5 kW⋅h per 100 km when driving up to 110 km/h.

As the creators of Lightyear 0 say, if you live in a sunny area and drive less than 50 km a day – for example, to and from work – you never have to charge your vehicle. The electric car can drive up to 70 km on solar power – that is, for free. True, it will have to stand in the sun all day to do so, but the Lightyear 0 can always be recharged either from a normal electrical outlet or at a charging station.