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‘World’s first off-road solar SUV’ just drove across Morocco powered only by the sun

⁨602⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/stella-terra-off-road-solar-powered-suv-morocco-hnk-spc/index.html

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Comments

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  • Kbobabob@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    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.

    This actually seems pretty good. I suppose those works go down over time and depending on how dirty they are.

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    • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Those filthy numbers will go down all day

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    • MooseBoys@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s by draining the battery, not by sustaining a charge. If it gets 710km in the sun and 660km in cloudy weather, it probably gets 610 without any solar panels at all.

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    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Wait, someone above stated that this took them a week and half of travel time. If they could go 441 miles on a single charge, why did it take them an additional 8-9 days to accomplish the remaining 179 miles?

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  • PostaL@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Powered only by the sun and pure ugliness

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    • Gsus4@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The car was built by a team of students, wtf does it matter if it’s ugly to you?

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      • sturmblast@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        look at me I don’t know what humor is

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    • EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That thing looks like it’s the mullet of cars lmao.

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      • Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Welcome to how prototypes work.

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  • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Ugly as sin but I’m down if I can drive it mostly solar and plug in when needed in a more temperate climate

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    • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You wouldn’t, there is actually very little energy in solar for an array the size of a vehicle roof, and it would likely take days to recharge.

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      • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I can’t YET, this is clearly early technology, in a few years who knows. Remember we went from not being able to fly to landing on the moon in a lifetime

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    • magnetosphere@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Well, I wouldn’t expect a bunch of engineering students to be on the cutting edge of style anyway, so I’ll cut them some slack in that department.

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      • trash80@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I completely agree. Function before form.

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  • ViscloReader@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That car looks very funny

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    • hagelslager@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And yet, still better looking than the cybertruck.

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    • madcaesar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You mean ugly as sin

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      • Gsus4@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        How come there are so many here heckling prototypes for being ugly when the ford T was so popular?

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      • Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        And yet people flocked to buy pt cruisers and that was a finished model.

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    • Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Is this your first time encountering prototypes?

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  • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Misread headline as “world’s worst off-road solar suv” and thought, “it’s nice there’s enough competition in this space for there to be a worst one.”

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    • Hereforpron2@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Imagine what the best one could do

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  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    My gosh that’s hideous.

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    • darkpanda@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Literally looks like The Homer — the Car Built for Homer.

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    • hOrni@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Still better than the Tesla truck, dough.

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  • lemann@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Impressive work by the students IMO, a 1200kg EV campervan that achieves a realistic range extension with its solar power roof. Great to see that this is even possible with current solar tech though - I wonder what something like this would look like in the future with more efficient panels.

    Let’s say this matures, what would be the stand out differences between something like this, and a normal combustion vehicle? The main advantages the combustion has would be really good fuel density (longer range) and no waiting on the batteries to recharge, however the solar vehicle is much more lightweight (harder to get stuck, as mentioned in the article) and requires almost no maintenance… maybe just dusting off the panels after driving through a sandy region

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    • nymwit@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Did you see the pictures? It’s like the size of a sedan. Campervan seems a stretch.

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  • MrSqueezles@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    uses “lightweight and robust” composite materials to cut weight

    Pretty great as an experiment. I wonder how this would fare in crash tests, whether there’s a way to make composites work in practical scenarios.

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    • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Usually that’s marketing speak for carbon fibre. And that is certainly safe, the body of the the BMW i3 is basically made entirely out of it.

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  • BorgDrone@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Cool. Now do Norway in winter.

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    • oldGregg@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      And then the bottom of the ocean.

      I’m not buying one until it can drive me to the North Pole.

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      • Chee_Koala@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        With the heater AND air-conditioning on, we have needs!

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      • Sidewayshighways@yall.theatl.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Try that on a rogue planet… Bitch (Jessie pinkman style)

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      • doingthestuff@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Holy! I think I just found Krampus!

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    • AlwaysNowNeverNotMe@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Give it a few years

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  • nymwit@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is a neat project…and terrible reporting.

    Did they start out with any charge? How long to charge it fully via solar? How long it took them to do their trip? You could easily read this and think they did it by driving the full range (one of the few stats they give) out every day unless you’re knowledgeable enough to see what they’re not telling you. Is that range at 30mph? People are reading range figures and thinking, “well, gee, the EVs I can buy only do X and this does Y!”, which isn’t comparable at all without how that range is defined. If those figures shouldn’t be compared to regular cars, then say it in the article! This is a 20-30 mile a day charged-by-solar-in-the-desert-near-the-equator vehicle, which isn’t nothing, but not really as presented. Greenwashing (it’s probably not) or whatever this should be called doesn’t help the needed planetary shift away from fossil fuels.

    Looking for other reporting (where are other commenters finding the duration of the trip?):

    Guardian - no mention of time.

    bonus: “We hope this can be an inspiration to car manufacturers such as Land Rover and BMW to make it a more sustainable industry. The car was actually very comfortable in the off-road conditions as it is very light and does not get stuck.”

    Remind me how it was so lightweight again? Does it have LR & BMW level noise damping? It surely had AC and all that right? I don’t know because that info wasn’t provided. You don’t need to convince LR and BMW, you need to convince consumers to go without those.

    Daily Mail - no mention of time

    Designboom - no mention of time

    Jalopnik - no mention of time, which is disappointing for a car specific site

    This is a cool project and it’s cool university students did it, but why leave out such a misleading pieces of information? It’s bandied about as a “showing people it’s possible” thing as in, “you could have a solar car!”, but leave out all the bits that really make it possible, like forgoing AC or the daily miles driven. That none of the reporting on this has this information either means [puts on tinfoil hat] it’s a vast conspiracy to make green stuff look more palatable [tinfoil off], it’s all confluence of interest in making it look more palatable, or the information just wasn’t given out, or they’re all referencing the same source news-wire style. Frustrating.

    Where’s the real information? I feel like we’re in a race against time to move away from fossil fuels so things like this need to not be misleading.

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  • abies_exarchia@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Ok now do british columbia

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  • NothingSpecial@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Of course its the Dutch.

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  • zloboslav@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    But why do they keep making those eco concept cars look so goofy? Wouldn’t it be better marketing if it looked cool instead? I don’t get it…

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    • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      1. it’s not meant to be marketed for sales. It’s not for sale.

      2. aerodynamics.

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    • Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
      1. It’s designed for a very specific purpose for solar. Not for aesthetics.
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    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
      1. It only looks goofy because you’re not normalized to it. Current car design would look goofy 50 years ago.
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