Lightyear
The Quantum Leap in EV development
Lightyear, a start-up by World Solar Car Challenge Winners.
Lightyear, founded in 2016 by a team of former students, hailing from the Technical University of Eindhoven, Netherlands.
The team holds the record for most wins at the World Solar Challenge, Australia. They have won all the four editions in cruiser category. The Cruiser category vehicles should comfortably seat four adults and run on solar power. The race is spread over a period of five days and over 2000 miles.
It all started in 2013, when the World Solar Championship introduced the Cruiser category. Lex Hoefsloot and Roy Cobbenhagen, students at Technical University Eindhoven, decided to take part in the World Solar Challenge.
The formation of Solar Team Eindhoven was a secret affair, because the car was still in the development phase, and students did not want to give away too much. Even the selection of the team was very secretive. The incoming members did not even know what they were up to.
The time which the team took to complete the car was beyond imagination. It was only three months and the team built a prototype car for the challenge. The enthusiastic team members worked round the clock to make this project a reality.
Initially, all the designing of components was in CAD software. Using these models team members were able to verify the compatibility of all the components. This process aided the rapid development of the prototype vehicle. After lots of brainstorming, ideation, innovation, and manufacturing Stella was born. It was a sight to behold.
Stella was the most practical solar car ever. It was in the news all over the World. The major tech publications had something to say about Stella. Such a response was quite unreal for many students. None of them could have ever imagined so much attention for successfully developing a prototype.
I was so delighted that one day I can tell my children that your Father was featured in the news. — Team Member Solar Team Eindhoven
In 2013 the Team won the challenge and again achieved the feat in 2015. Where finishing the World Solar Challenge is considered to be an achievement, not only completing but winning it twice definitely grabbed some eyeballs. The Crunchies supplemented the success of Stella in 2015. The 8th edition Crunchies regarded Stella as the best Tech innovation for the year with Apple Pay at the runner-up’s spot. Later on the team went on the win the 2017 and 2019 championships by a huge margin over other teams.
According to the team members Stella was not losing any charge while cruising on the roads at 70 miles/hr on a bright sunny day. Stella was producing twice the energy it consumed on a bright sunny day.
The mention in Crunchie and consecutive wins built up a lot of confidence within the team. In 2016 some team members got together and started Lightyear, a tech start-up with a goal to produce solar powered electric vehicles. According to the statistics the transportation takes upto 74% of all the total energy consumption. The world travels around 9.5 Trillion miles(a Lightyear) on fossil fuels today. The company aims to turn the statistics by 2035 and shift the energy consumption from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
The start-up is chaired by CEO Lex Hoefsloot former team mentor Solar Team Eindhoven . The company has recruited respectable engineers who have worked previously with major automakers like Volvo and Tesla. These engineers are helping shape the future of the company with their valuable experience.
The brand philosophy is pretty simple, implementing all the knowledge gathered by the team members while prototyping for the challenge and providing sustainable solutions to the common public.
With all their expertise the team has developed Lightyear One.
Lightyear One is slated to hit the markets in 2021.
Lightyear One is a solar-powered electric vehicle with 54 square feet (five square meters) of solar panelling on the bonnet, roof, and hood. The design of the vehicle complies with the highest efficiency standards.
Efficiency is the main focus because, with higher efficiency you get higher outputs. This way we can reduce our input to achieve desired outputs.
Lightyear One has an exceptionally low aerodynamic drag, with the best aerodynamic coefficient of any car currently on the market. This increases the range of the car by decreasing energy consumption.
The car has a claimed range of around 500 miles on a bright sunny day. Lightyear One can travel around 450 miles just on the batteries. Even on a cold winter day with no sunlight at all it can manage 250 miles of range on a single charge. This amount of range could help remove range anxiety for many potential EV buyers.
The secret behind such a high range value is the design philosophy. Efficient design philosophy is what makes this vehicle stand apart.
The efficiency of the car is so relevant because the CEO believes that if we can achieve the same results with lower energy consumption, then just do it.
“The Targets set up by Lightyear were extreme. The only way we could meet them was to think in a rather holistic way. Everyone should look at this car and think it’s the car of the future.”.—
Chief Designer, Lowie Vermeersch, CEO Granstudio
Engineers analysed each component of the car before it would make its way into the final product. The engineers successfully crafted a frame out of Aluminium and Carbon Fibre to keep the weight as low as possible while keeping structural rigidity at its best.
Four hub motors are powering the vehicle delivering the power directly to the wheels. This helps the car to reach 0–60 in under 10 seconds. This is not remarkable as other electric cars, but the company ensures that the car will not disappoint when cruising on the highways. Remember, they are the World Solar Challenge champions, so they know what works best.
Whereas other vehicles use motors and axle drive to power the wheels, the in-wheel hub motors allow to produce power where it is required hence improving the efficiency of the drivetrain. The placement of motors also helps in regenerative breaking, because all the wheels have their motors so no energy losses there as well. The power directly goes back into the motors via the wheel hub and then back to the battery with minimal losses.
The major advantage of the Lightyear One is that you can park your car anywhere on the street. The car will charge itself at a rate of 7.5 miles per hour using the sunlight. So that when you are back from work, you have enough range to get back home. Many customers will never need to charge the car using a socket because the amount of energy the car recovers is going to be above average driving.
The car has smart integrated systems that allow the car to supply energy back to the charging port. When the battery has charged 100%, the car supplies the captured power to the charger cable, returning the power to the grid. This way, the car acts as a solar panel when not on the road, generating complementary power for your home.
The Lightyear engineers design and manufacture the solar panels at the company factory. The solar cells provide about 20% more energy than the traditional ones found in the market.
The solar cell integration works in a way that all the cells are individually connected to the power management system. This means that even if part of the roof or hood is under the shadow, other cells continue to efficiently collect solar energy.
The car is expected to cost around $170k initially. The company has started acquiring bookings for the first 500 models. This car is not designed for the masses, but the target audience is receiving the product well. The company aims to produce smaller and practical car for the masses in the future and hopes that once they succeed with Lightyear One, they will be able to bring the development costs down to a significant amount and introduce much affordable solar vehicles.
Few days ago Lightyear announced commercial partnership with Royal DSM to diversify the use of solar panels for other cars, trucks and vans in the market. With EV market expanding at rates never seen before this deal is a blessing for Lightyear.
If Lightyear is able to develop Solar Panels with increased efficiency, no one can stop them from achieving success. Immense amount of research work is required to produce a promising solution and Lightyear is the best company to do so. They have lots of experience and a highly talented team which can do achieve these targets.
This way if they are able to find a market for solar panels, eventually the cost for solar panels will come down and we can see more affordable solar panels and cars running on solar energy in future.
I think when Lightyear can produce more solar panels at its facilities and widen their customer base, they will successfully make a sustainable future.
