Stella Vie - A 5 seater luxury solar racer!

[RedDevil]

The Technical University of Eindhoven presented the newest incarnation of their solar racer family car: the Stella Vie.

The new regulations of the Aussie Solar Challenge allow for longer cars and limit the area for solar cells to 5 square meter, which means more room to play for the uncovered area.
And it shows.
The previous Stella cars were stumpnosed and bladetailed.
The Stella Vie has a much more aerodynamic and aesthetic body, with 9% less drag than the Stella Lux and 20% less drag than the first Stella:






More info on the TUE news site: https://www.cursor.tue.nl/en/news-ar...-stella-vie-1/

Stella Vie in a nutshell

Weight: approx. 380 kg
Dimensions: 5 m long, 1.65 m wide, 1.22 m high
Roof surface area: 5 square meters
Battery: 50 kg
Range: 1000 km on 1 charge (on a summer's day in the Netherlands)
Number of occupants: 5

and https://solarteameindhoven.nl/
(not fully up to date at the time of posting)

The team hopes to get it certified as road legal, just like the previous Stella cars.

Presentation. Skip to 52:45. Dutch, but probably largely self-explanatory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyJp9fn3hrM

[oil pan 4]

Looks like they have maybe around 500 to 600 watts of panels that will produce around half of rated capacity laying almost flat like that.
So it should harvest between 1 and 2 Kwh per day and if it weighs almost nothing should get at least 10 real world miles per Kwh so it might actually not need to be plugged in that much.

[SH@UN]

Better hope it doesn't get cloudy.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Looks like they have maybe around 500 to 600 watts of panels that will produce around half of rated capacity laying almost flat like that.
So it should harvest between 1 and 2 Kwh per day and if it weighs almost nothing should get at least 10 real world miles per Kwh so it might actually not need to be plugged in that much.

It uses 5 square meters of high efficiency (>40%) photo-voltaic cells.
I could not find the specs on that, but we can extrapolate it from the Stella Lux data.

The Stella Lux has 5.8 square meters of cells and a 15 kWh battery pack.
The TUE provided this graph for the projected range per month in Holland:



In June and July solar power extends the range by about 40%. So its cells produce around 6 kWh per day.
It takes less than 2 kWh to get me to work and back... If I'd hook it up it would substantially reduce my electricity bill.

[Stubby79]

How fast is it going to get that kind of mileage?

[NeilBlanchard]

They had about 900 watts of solar cells on their previous design. This one looks like it has a bit more than that? 5 square meters is ~53.8 sq ft which is a lot. 40% is VERY HIGH EFFICIENCY - and that means they are expensive.

The motors they use are over 98% efficient, I think. They are hub motors, and they are not cheap, either.

[oil pan 4]

Those cells are about double the efficiency of normal cells.
Still laying almost flat they will make about half of name plate, even in summer.
Those panels must not be getting very hot or something where they are because 6kwh from that much panel sounds a little hard to believe.
If it can be done then great.
I'm going to assume these double normal efficiency cells cost more than double normal cells right?
When will these 40% cells be made into panels that people with marginally above average disposable income can afford?

[rmay635703]

When I can buy one and register it on us roads wake me.

[RedDevil]

The panels are slightly smaller than the ones on the Stella Lux, as the rules have limited the maximal surface to 5 square meters.
The cells are about the highest efficiency cells in existence. The university is very much involved in that.
In fact, all solar racers use top grade cells. I believe the Nuon solar team (of the Delft university) have used a row of cells from a satellite that had been returned to earth by space shuttle on one of their winning solar cars

IIRC retail value of those cells would be 20 times what the consumer solar cells (up to 23% efficiency) cost.
Solar cars with these specs aren't ready for mass marketing yet.

[oil pan 4]

It's 20x the cost?
That stinks. I would pay double just for 30% efficiency.