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Sunday, 14 July 2013

STELLA: THE STUDENTS-INVENTED WORLD'S FIRST SOLAR FAMILY CAR


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Students create the world's first solar family car
By Colin Druce-McFadden,
Dvice, 8 July 2013.

Ah, summer. The sun is shining and most students are out of school. It's the perfect time for a road trip. Every year hordes of families pile into the old station wagon and depart for places unknown - only to be brutally mugged at the gas pump.

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Image via GigaOm

But one team of students in the Netherlands has come up with a novel way of side-stepping the ever-mounting price at the pump. Meet Stella, the solar powered family car. Unlike plug-in hybrids and battery-swapping EVs, solar vehicles have largely been overlooked in the search for an energy-efficient family sedan. But that didn't stop Team Eindhoven from building Stella - something they did from the ground up in just six months.

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The four-seater solar car has a range of 372 miles, beating the Tesla Model S by over 100 miles per charge. There's even a trunk in this thing.

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What we don't know is exactly how fast Stella can go, but Team Eindhoven has plans to make her street legal, so she'll probably at least beat your neighbour's golf cart to the supermarket.

Check out Stella's grand unveiling in the video below.



Top image credit: Solarracing.com

[Source: Dvice. Edited. Some images added.]

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