Chinese-made solar-powered car gets 150 kilometers on a 30-hour charge
By Donald Melanson 
posted October 17th 2008 2:19PM
posted October 17th 2008 2:19PM
It may not attract the same sort of glances as a Tesla, or a Volt, for that matter, but this solar-powered car built by China's Zhejiang 001 Group is pretty impressive in its own right, both for its price (just $5,560), and it's efficiency. That latter bit is a result of some rather un-integrated solar panels, which absorb 95% of the solar energy they take in and convert it to electricity at between 14 and 17% efficiency, which is actually pretty impressive as far as solar panels go. According to the company, that should let you travel about 150 kilometers on a 30-hour charge, though you'll only be able to go five kilometers on a one-hour charge. No word on a release outside of China, as you might have guessed, but the company has apparently already produced ten of 'em for sale inside the country, with more presumably on the way.
[Via The Oil Drum]
[Via The Oil Drum]
@Kamokazi
You call it poor crash test results, China calls it population control.
I bet there's lead or melamine in that car. Don't eat it!!
But it looks so tiny and bite sized....
HANG on a moment is this not the tech that a british business man came up with but tried to get contracts help and funding from the uk goverment but was turned away,as they said his idea would never work and went on dragons DEN and then last i heard sold his ideas to the chinese and japanese !!!? LIKE WTF!!!!
@Kamokazi,
Those cars in the video, of course, represent every single Chinese car ever made and ever to be made.
(That said, this here solar car doesn't exactly strike me as particularly safe. I'll give you that much.)
Oh how quickly people forget the exploding laptop batteries from China.
I wouldnt drive this thing if they gave it out for free.
k thx.
Yeah, cos EVERYTHING from china is shit. Like Ipods/Macbooks/many other devices.
Exploding laptop batteries ? Isn't that Sony and LG ?
Hey but at least people in China actually try to do something with technology and science, make alternative fuel vehicles, unlike many other countries in this world, do nothing, sit on their buttocks and only know how to laugh at others but in the end, fail to achieve even the smallest thing.
Hey Matt, there is a bit of a difference in the quality of good coming from China dependant on whether it is MADE in China or ASSEMBLED in China (often having parts manufactured in countries such as Japan that give a damn about quality control).
The good news is, while it can only drive 5 kilometers on a one hour charge, the car can only do four kilometers per hour, and thus can drive all day!
I'd like to chalk this up as "a slight improvement over riding your bike," and not much else...
There's probably going to be tons of comments making fun of how ugly the car is, and completely overlook the poignancy of this development. 15 years from now, we're going to look back on this car as the development that best signifies the most obvious moment at which the U.S. had fallen from the #1 position in technology development. Laugh it up people. We should be embarrassed and worried that the Chinese came up with this in such a short period of development and have actually made it affordable.
See here's the problem though, practicaity versus afortibility.
For someone who takes like around 30 minutes to get to work, it's barely going to do it, espeically if we're talking about city limits. Should we be embarrsed, not necessarily. It's not like America CAN'T do it, it's more like many of them are looking for pratical reasons, and others are simply looking for a proftiable margin.
And still there are companies looking towards hydrogen as the next source (even though it's looking like it's not going to be practical for the moment).
I see another car maker taking this idea and going a step foward with solar paint, or another method for it to conduct electricty better without necessarily making soalr pannel.
People need to realize that they (as of right now) have a weaker currency so it could easily be cheaper in the US and in Britian but in China it could be pretty hefty (the currency cituation at least looks towards it).
But their attempt is something not to take lightly.
AKBlade13
@AKBlade13
Huh? This isn't a plug-in charger; it charges constantly as long as the sun is shining on it. If it takes you 30 min to get to work, it's probably at most 30 miles away (more likely somewhere in the low 20s). You can park outside and get that amount back while you're working.
I'd be more worried about vandals fucking your shit up.
So you believe that they came up with a brilliant idea. A car that can travel five kilometers on a full charge. That's about three miles. And it only takes you thirty hours to get the full charge. Charge your car for more than a day so you can drop the kids off at school as long as it isn't more than a mile and a half away. You can't understand the limitations of solar panels and why we don't use them on cars?
Brilliant.
Well color me fail. Apparently I can't read properly. that's 150 kilometers for a full charge. It still isn't good enough to have to wait thirty hours for a full charge.
I prefer the term deathcan for these cars, as, when you get into an accident, it is as if you opened a can of death, both for you, and those around you. Though admittedly I'd rather die than be seen in that ugly POS. Atleast then I could choose "Quick and Painless" as a death option; though gunshot to the brain doesn't have the "life long debilitating injuries with no chance of normalcy" option unless VERY carefully aimed. Rest assured though, if I ever want to spend the rest of my life in recovery, I'll just take that thing over 10MPH on a road with other cars.
What people don't understand is, yes you have to have tons of safety features to make a small car safe. Look at the crash tests against walls, poles, etc. What happens when your made in china brakes fail? "Good thing there are no SUVs here, I'm invincible!" Not. Do I drive an SUV? No. Do I drive a shitbox honda? No. I drive a safe, practical (30+MPG), compact Audi A4 1.8T. Am I thrilled with *only* 30MPG? No, but its better than the 15MPG that an SUV with equivalent safety gets with two less drive wheels (I have full time AWD). And if I got into an accident with a Honda, there is no doubt in my mind who would be the one being scraped off the pavement, all for an extra 3-4MPG... And a Honda is a "safe" car compared to this chinese POS. Now you understand why I think that car is HORRIBLE and a step back away from progress. A 150km step back.
HA! Cynical, but humorous. You'll get red minuses for that, for sure. :D
But I do agree with one point. I drive a decent mid sized American car with a 215HP DOHC engine. It seats four very comfortably, five in a pinch. It has a very nicely sized trunk with pass through the rear seat. And it gets 32 MPG highway. I'm quite happy with that because I like to have some metal around me. Sure I'd like 40, 50 or more MPG but it at this point I am not willing to give up the safety, performance and room I have to get it.
I'm torn.
1. I love the concept. I love that they're doing this at all.
2. I love the price.
3. I don't mind the look at all.
4. I would be really worried, if I bought this, about whether it would take 5 mins or 10 mins for those panels to get stolen off the top.
5. Overall I'm mostly depressed that it would take 30 hrs to charge for that level of distance. That does not encourage me at all.
@Kamokazi
Many of the cheap foreign cars are meant for slow speed city driving. The crashes shown are not representative of normal driving conditions in crowded city streets.
@kamokazi:
I agree with your logic. I don't buy American cars, either, because I once went into a museum and stole an old Ford and test-drove it. It didn't even go 30 miles per hour. So now I don't buy any car made in America because none of them go over 30 miles per hour.
@Mikey, don't try to excuse poor design. Whatever the speed, airbags and structural integrity make a real difference to mortality.
However, it is clear that China is not yet at the standard of European and US car makers - in terms of safety, aesthetics or lack of financial viability.
We in the West might balk at their safety standards and lack of quality control, but China is a relatively poor country full of people who are willing to cut some corners to have a better lifestyle. We benefit when they produce a copycat phone or PMP at a lower cost, but we balk at auto designs that fail to match safety standards.
Not so long ago we didn't have airbags, or even seat-belts for everybody in the car.
Enough of the ridicule already. Let them mature. China will break a can of whoop ass over many of us in the years to come.
"....Your American? Sorry...."
I'm sorry your 3rd grade teacher failed you so miserably.
This looks like it's powered by 3 of the 100w solar panels I have on my pop-up camper. It can barely keep a single high-end deep-cycle battery charged and all I do with the camper is run LED lights and maybe the furnace blower on cold nights. I would be SERIOUSLY amazed if this puppy could beat one of those plastic battery-power cars that indulgent parents get for their toddlers to drive around the driveway in hopes of crashing spectacularly enough to get on Funniest Home Videos--which is the highest rated show here in Bulgaria.
No, Mikey may be right. These cars are probably considered fine where they're used. But they would never make it in the US market with the safety regulations and customer wants/needs.
As far as China whooping ass, fine. But I wish they would finance it themselves instead of with western and Japanese manufacturing outsource funds.
Hell, If its actually in production sign me up. 30 hour charges are a bit steep though but you know its a new time.
@happy_penguin:
China would LOVE to finance their own stuff, in fact the law makes it so that they have to have half equity in all the major things over there. The truth is that companies WANT to go outsource to China since they make more money that way, it's rather odd to blame China for having an economy people want to invest in. The foreign companies would love to be ablto have 100% ownership over everything in China like in the old days (pre-communist China when foreigners carved up China and owned pretty much everything valuable-go visit Shanghai sometime and you'll see how all the older buildings look like they're from european cities-because they often are).
Anyways, having gone to China and seen some of the business antics over there I can pretty much explain all the idiocy that occurs pretty simply: people want to cash in on the new capitalist free market-but they've been living under communism and corrupt cronyism for so long that they often have no clue what they're doing, and some people still attempt stupid corrupt crap that will eventually destroy them. Like the melamine in the milk-they still haven't gotten it through their heads that saving a few cents today is friggin' stupid when doing this kind of crap will totally destroy your entire business. And now all the milk companies are going bankrupt because nobody will EVER trust them again. Sooner or later though they'll realize that it makes no sense to pull these antics, because the free market will continue to punish stupid crap like melamine in milk, or lead in paint, or the store I saw trying to sell chapstick for $9 (that's $9 US dollars). The corrupt companies and industries will go bankrupt, and honest companies with quality products will succeed, and stores will realize that selling 10 chapsticks for $1 each is more profitable than selling 0 chapsticks for $9 (they were covered in a layer of dust so thick I think the chapsticks had been sitting around for a decade).
So to sum it up, the free market and capitalism will do the job of punishing all the morons currently ruining China's reputation, and someday instead of corrupt greedy idiots poisoning milk, they'll have corrupt idiots selling mortgage derivatives and tanking the world economy like us.
If I had a house with a grass hut garage I wouldn't stow no thrones above this sucker.
1. This Typical Chinese Crap is no surprisingly a knockoff of "old" Daewoo Matiz [Design]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo_Matiz
2. All Chinese cars are "deathtraps" [Quality/Safety]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ3oyo-irJ4 (Asian Car Comparison Guide: Japanese vs. Korean vs. Chinese)
Truth Hurts.
I do not care how unsafe it is. HELL KEEP THE GOD DAMNED SOLAR PANELS for all I care. I want the 90mile range for $5 grand!!!
THATS What I want. My cummute is 54 miles one way. I need 65-70miles to be safe I can charge at work.
I want this so god damned badly its making me sick!
whats it costs to ship a car from china I can just register it as a home made car.
@ JK Rolling
What a stupid post, they make solar cars because they don't want to buy GAS ?? what are you ? Did you just finish your elementary school ? I am not going to jump into conclusion that you're an American, you're probably from one of those POS countries that do nothing all year round and show efforts or contribution to science&technology or the society.
you're probably from one of those POS countries that do nothing all year round and show no efforts or contribution to science&technology or the society
"it's" != "its"
lol, I think this should be made into a DIY weekend project for us mechanics...