Sunday, June 1, 2008

Astrolab Revisited

After checking their website, it seems that calling this a solar powered car is a tad misleading. The solar panels give enough power to take you 18 km, or 11 miles. So if you have a commute longer than that you need to plug it in at night to charge the battery, which gives the bulk of the 110 km range (68 miles). It uses nickel hydride batteries. Lithium ion would give more storage but I guess they have not figured out how to dissipate the heat yet (they can explode at high temperature).

And it still seems to lack a windshield. I don't know why.

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