Solar Powered

The Lightyear One solar EV validation prototype has taken to the test track, where it was driven for almost nine hours at 85 km/h and clocked up 710 km on a single charge of the 60-kWh battery – with a little help from its solar panels.

Well-respected Austrian solar energy company Fronius has broken ground on its first customer green hydrogen hub, giving us a good look at what it'll take to run a fleet of vehicles on green hydrogen produced entirely on-site using solar panels.

Ahead of scheduled production of its PV-packing battery electric family car next year, German startup Sono Motors is joining forces with MAN Truck & Bus to trial integrating solar cells into an electric panel van.

Another Californian EV startup has unveiled an electric concept SUV – but this time, it's built to do between 10-60 miles per day on pure sunlight. The Humble One will rock more than 80 square feet of solar panels to self-charge even when unplugged.

Light-equipped bike helmets are now fairly common, but most of them still have to be plugged into a charger, and manually turned on and off as needed. The just-announced Omne Eternal, however, lets ambient light do all the work.

At the online-only CES 2021 earlier this month, German mobility startup Sono Motors revealed a collaboration with EasyMile to install its solar technology on driverless shuttles. Now we have a few more details.

Sono Motors has shown the second-gen Sion vehicle prototype at CES 2021, which features 248 photovoltaic panels integrated into the vehicle's body that will top up its battery pack during daylight hours, for up to 20 miles of extra range per day.

With three square meters of solar panel on the roof, and a body so ludicrously efficient that it can squeeze up to four times as much range out of a kilowatt-hour as other EVs, the new Aptera becomes the first EV you can drive daily and never charge.

Austrian boatbuilder Silent Yachts has already gained a fair bit of attention with its solar electric catamarans. Its just-announced latest model should continue that trend, as it's the result of a partnership with automakers Volkswagen and Cupra.

While autoclaves are considered essential for sterilizing medical equipment in First World health care facilities, they're often not available in developing nations where access to electricity is limited. A new solar-powered autoclave may be the answer to that problem.

Brazil's original Antarctic research base, built in the 1980s, was destroyed in a blaze in 2012. Estúdio 41 has designed the Antarctic Station Comandante Ferraz to keep scientists safe in some of the most extreme conditions on the planet.

A couple of years ago, we covered a two-seat electric pedalcycle called the Screecher that rocked a curved solar canopy above the rider to charge its batteries. Now the next generation is going into limited production.