TU Eindhoven presents solar off-road car

The solar student team of TU Eindhoven has developed an off-road car that is powered only by the energy of the sun and can thus operate independently of charging stations. The Stella Terra is robust enough to drive on both asphalt roads and on uneven terrain.

Weighing 1,200 kilograms, the road-legal solar car reaches a top speed of 145 kph and is said to travel 630 kilometres on a sunny day. The Stella Terra has already undergone extensive testing in the Netherlands. In October, the team will set off for Morocco, where the solar car is expected to cover almost a thousand kilometres through various landscapes and end the journey in the Sahara Desert.

“Stella Terra must withstand the harsh conditions of off-roading while remaining efficient and light enough to be powered by the sun. That is why we had to design almost everything for Stella Terra ourselves, from the suspension to the inverters for the solar panels,” said Wisse Bos, team manager of Solar Team Eindhoven, adding: “With Stella Terra, we want to demonstrate that the transition to a sustainable future offers reasons for optimism and encourages individuals and companies to accelerate the energy transition.”

tue.nl

2 Comments

about „TU Eindhoven presents solar off-road car“

D Link

18.09.2023 um 09:13

I truly hope that Stella vehicles, pioneered by Technical University Eindhoven, will eventually end up available to the public. This was my hope with the Lightyear spin offs, especially the Lightyear 2, of which I remain on the waiting list!

Moisés Pereira

18.09.2023 um 15:28

I also hope that solar should be the way forward (specially since I'm from Portugal), but due to the still few km's that can be harvested from the sun, the tech seems not to be appreciated by big money and car companies. Sono went bankrupt, Aptera struggling to find backers, Lightyear probably the same. Let's see if the perovskite innovation on panels will add more range to these vehicles. Recently I followed a Dutch couple that went around Africa with a Skoda Eniaq and they needed to carry a BIG inverter and more than 10m2 of solar to charge. But they made it all the way to Kenya!