Dutch students from the Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands, have managed to create a motorhome that operates on solar energy, in a bid to help the transition towards green energy.
The students equipped the motorhome, which is shaped like a large teardrop, with several solar panels on its roof and its lateral wings in order for it to be able to travel up to 740 km (460 miles) on a sunny day.
Image credits: Solar Team Eindhoven / Bart van Overbeeke
The students equipped the motorhome, which is shaped like a large teardrop, with several solar panels on its roof and its lateral wings in order for it to be able to travel up to 740 km (460 miles) on a sunny day.
This comes as the young generation’s latest manoeuvre in order to encourage car makers and politicians to increase the speed of the transition towards a more sustainable and greener way of living.
The motorhome first rolled up in Madrid in October, no noise whatsoever, just very smoothly. Madrid was one of the stops in a month-long journey from the Netherlands to south of Spain, in order to showcase more sustainable means of transport.
The vehicle, named Stella Vita (Latin for ‘star’ and ‘life’, in English terms ‘Star Life’) was created by engineering students at the Dutch university, in order to push the people in the motor industry to make the move to greener energy at a faster rate.
Solar panels on the roof and on the lateral wings that unfold when the vehicle stops give it the ability to be a self-sustaining house on wheels, with the battery also being able to power a fridge, coffee maker and laptop in a cabin fit for two people.
Lotte van Dasler, a 23-year-old biomedical engineering student that has spent the last year working on the project claimed that “Of course, when there is no sun we have a small problem, but we designed the car to charge it on the electrical grid as well”.
She expressed her pleasure with the fact that the vehicle’s combined information and entertainment system manages to provide real-time data on energy consumption and production.
This allows the driver to carefully assess and consider the trade-off between the different uses.
“Everyone knows what a metre looks like… but if I ask how much is one kilowatt hour, do you know?”, the student said.
“It creates more energy awareness… You can make the choice between do I want to make my breakfast, or drive a few kilometres further”, she added.
While the vehicle is relatively difficult to steer in tight spaces due to it having no power steering or assisted braking, it is able to cruise comfortably at 120 kilometres per hour down a highway or a long road.
Tijn ter Horst, 21, another one of the car’s designers, said that “It’s like a normal car with normal pedals and brakes,” with the only difference being that “it’s 7.2 metres (23.62 ft) long, so you should take that into account”.
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