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You recharge an electric car by plugging it into the electric grid, where renewable solar energy may make up part of the power supply. But what about using solar panels mounted directly on EVs to recharge their batteries? A new electric car from a Dutch automaker does just that.Vehicle startup Lightyear says it will begin production late this year of its Lightyear 0 (“Zero”)—and Car and Driver was able to drive a pre-production development vehicle. The mid-size four-door sedan promises up to 6840 miles a year of added range in the sunniest climate from the 54 square feet of solar cells under glass that cover its roof, hood, and liftgate. The price is roughly $265,000, steep for a car in the same category as the Tesla Model 3, which starts at one-fifth that price. But Lightyear intends the Zero to be a proof of concept. It will build and sell just 946 examples, to show the technology is workable and also gain data about the real-world performance of its solar panels.

Presuming it raises more capital, Lightyear’s second vehicle—the Lightyear 2—will be a compact crossover in the same segment as Tesla’s Model Y, according to CEO Lex Hoefsloot. He spoke to Car and Driver during a drive event in a pair of prototype Lightyear Zeros held in the hot, mostly sunny Navarre region of northeastern Spain. The target price for its second vehicle, which Lightyear hopes to launch in late 2024 or early 2025, is a far more affordable $31,700.Secret Sauce: Ultra-Efficient EverythingTo build a car for which today’s solar panels could provide substantial added electric range required engineering every aspect of the vehicle for extreme efficiency. Our 20-minute test drive of the pre-production Lightyear Zero development vehicle didn’t include any high-speed highway driving. It covered roughly 12 miles of two-lane country roads, numerous roundabouts, and a jaunt through one village. Under those conditions, indicated power usage was 91 to 134 Watt-hours per kilometer (4.7 to 6.9 miles/kWh)—versus 3 to 5 miles/kWh in most of today’s production EVs.The Lightyear Zero’s 60.0-kWh battery pack can be smaller and lighter than those of other EVs with similar capacities because the company strictly limits the stress on its cells. The car is far from a speed demon; the company quotes a zero-to-62-mph time of roughly 10 seconds—slow compared to a Tesla Model 3. Lightyear is still tuning the powertrain and said it expects to add 10 percent to maximum torque while retaining the same efficiency. Top speed is limited to 100 mph.
Longer Tail, Lower DragThe car itself is as close to a teardrop shape as you’ll find in any vehicle today, with a long tail in particular. That produces a very low claimed drag coefficient of 0.19. (Note that without a standardized measuring system for drag coefficients, claimed Cd figures aren’t necessarily comparable among different carmakers.) Active grille shutters, flat wheel covers, and partially enclosed rear wheel wells further reduce drag. Its carbon-fiber shell (made largely out of carbon-fiber waste recaptured from other uses) gives it an exceptionally light weight of a claimed 3500 pounds including 770 pounds of battery. And the Lightyear Zero will be the first production passenger car to use in-wheel hub motors, developed through several generations to be smaller and lighter for the power they deliver while eliminating driveshafts and other components. All of this translates into lower energy use. We couldn’t test the car’s energy use ourselves in the brief time we had to drive it, but Lightyear benchmarked its production-intent prototype against a Tesla Model 3 Standard RWD Plus. Their car, they said, used 10.5 kWh to cover 62 miles at a steady speed of 68 mph, while the Tesla required 16.1 kWh to do the same. The range provided by its 60.0-kWh battery was 350 miles, while the 50.0-kWh Model 3 returns 225 miles in the same tests.The upshot is a very efficient EV that goes farther per kilowatt-hour than similar vehicles, with the added bonus that energy from the sun translates to more added miles than it would in less efficient competitors. Lightyear expects the official range rating under the WLTP cycle to be 388 miles.On the RoadGetting into the low car with its steeply raked windshield requires careful head placement, but once inside, the seats are nicely shaped and very supportive. A digital instrument cluster and separate horizontal center touchscreen are conventional, though Lightyear is still working on display graphics to present energy usage in a more easily comprehensible way than the present list of numbers.Getting underway is as simple as pushing the “D” button in the row at the front of the console. Every Lightyear team member we spoke with stressed that the steering and accelerator mapping wasn’t final. Indeed, the steering was heavy and somewhat slow to respond, while the accelerator felt entirely linear, which produced leisurely takeoffs from a standing start. The car’s roadholding on relatively narrow tires was fine for daily use, though we squealed a front tire coming out of a roundabout. The car isn’t intended to be a sports sedan, as our Lightyear engineer riding along stressed. On our short drives, we perceived no ill effects from the heavier unsprung weight of the wheel motors—which weigh 82 pounds each plus another 9 pounds for the integrated inverter. Adding Range, Reducing Plug TimeThe team’s primary goal for the development prototypes was to ensure the solar generation aspect worked correctly. Testing at noontime, apps for the two test vehicles showed their panels producing 492 and 673 watts. The maximum solar charging rate is just above 1 kilowatt, the company says, about the same as what a 120-volt household outlet can provide, which can add up to 43 miles of range a day—or 6840 miles a year. You’ll note that that annual claim isn’t just the maximum per-day range multiplied by 365, because you don’t get long sunny days year-round. And the reason that it can add relatively so many miles is due to the Lightyear’s super-high efficiency; the number of miles the same solar array on a mainstream EV could add would be substantially fewer.The idea, then, is not that the sun provides all the needed charging for the car. Rather, it’s that the car can slowly charge during daylight to extend its range and reduce the frequency of charging, perhaps substantially depending on usage patterns.Assuming an average commute of 22 miles, Lightyear says solar energy can extend the time between recharges in daily use for as long as two months in a cloudy climate like its home country of the Netherlands—and up to seven months in a sunny area like Portugal.The Lightyear Zero won’t come to North America, so we won’t have a chance to see how efficient it is under American drive cycles. The Lightyear 2 will, however. We could imagine EV drivers in LA or Phoenix liking the idea of a more efficient car they don’t need to plug in as often.

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Superman IV was a disastrous end to a beloved movie series from the 1970s, turning heads for all the wrong reasons. The SuperVan 4, on the other hand, is turning heads for all the right ones as an astonishing addition to a beloved, if completely ridiculous, series of vehicles started in the 1970s. Ford unveiled the Frankensteinian marriage between its Performance division and a nearly unrecognizable E-Transit Custom body on June 23 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where it will show off its because-we-can bag of tricks for the first time.

The original SuperVan.
Ford

Officially known as the Ford Pro Electric SuperVan, the SuperVan 4 is the fourth Ford utility van to be retrofitted with a race-car-caliber powertrain, after the first SuperVan stuck a Transit bodyshell on a GT40 chassis back in 1971. This time, though, Ford Performance collaborated with Austria-based electric race and rally specialists STARD to bring the super-powered show-and-tell vans into the future with an all-electric design.

The SuperVan 4 harnesses the capabilities of a mid-mounted 50.0-kWh liquid-cooled battery, located where previous SuperVans’ ICEs were, to power four electric motors that promise to deliver 1973 horses and a zero-to-62-mph time of under two seconds via an all-wheel-drive system. The SuperVan 4 comes complete with a full roll cage and racing seats built to FIA standards, as well as motorsport-grade brakes.

Ford

It also utilizes a Sync display, not only to do the regular stuff but also to control the SuperVan 4’s funky driving modes and transmit real-time data for optimal performance, just as racing teams do. The aforementioned driving modes include road, track, drag, drift, and rally modes, plus a “Tyre Cleaning mode” that brakes one axle and spins the other, ostensibly to clean and warm the tires before performance runs; head-turning burnouts are just a bonus.However, all these high-tech components are not so much contained in a Transit Custom—which Ford brags is Europe’s bestselling van—as they are housed by a steel spaceframe and composite body panels made to look like a Transit-inspired spaceship. While distinctly van-shaped, the SuperVan 4 has extravagantly futuristic styling courtesy of Ford’s Cologne, Germany-based design team. It features a front splitter, rear wing, dorsal fin, and huge cutaways to generate more downforce, as well as neon-green accents and a front light bar for exotic flair.

Ford

Still, the SuperVan 4 has a cargo space behind the driver and a sliding door to load it, lest you forget that the “van” component of the SuperVan is just as important as the “super” component. Ford even intends to add an electromagnetic cargo-securing system, because God forbid cargo shift even slightly at supersonic speeds. To put the fantastical contraption to the test at Goodwood, Le Mans–winning driver Romain Dumas is suiting up in the cockpit of the SuperVan 4. Aside from his multitudinous endurance-racing accomplishments, Dumas has also set outright records at Goodwood and Pikes Peak in the fully electric Volkswagen I.D. R. Who knows, maybe a new record could be on the clock when the SuperVan 4 climbs the hill this weekend. Regardless, the ludicrous but fun box of speed will certainly be something to watch.
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According to a study performed by a Subaru dealership, Americans say they are willing to travel an average distance of 469 miles for their next car. The state prepared to travel the farthest is (somewhat unsurprisingly) Alaska at 722 miles.The survey consisted of 2690 drivers in March 2022. Gas prices are high. Very high. That hasn’t stopped Americans who are looking to battle equally high, record-setting monthly car payments. As means of fighting against rising car payments, prospective buyers are traveling farther out from their local dealership groups than they may have in the past. According to a study conducted by a Subaru dealership in Lexington, Kentucky, Americans say they are willing to travel an average distance of 469 miles to find their next car. The study surveyed 2690 drivers and broke down the miles consumers were willing to travel on a state-by-state basis. Relatively unsurprisingly, the state willing to travel the largest number of miles is Alaska at 722. The state least willing to travel is Vermont, with prospective buyers willing to travel 286 miles.

Quantrell Subaru

As we pointed out in March, finding good deals on cars is still possible for buyers who can remain flexible. That was as true two years ago as it is now, and although we don’t have comparative numbers from pre-pandemic days, part of the needed flexibility appears to be willingness to travel to get the car you want.

Rather than focusing only on deals you can find in your ZIP code, it may be worth traveling beyond state borders in order to find a great deal. It may also be worth considering ordering new vehicles rather than looking at used cars which have seen a significantly larger price jump than their new counterparts. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index Summary, prices for new vehicles were up just over 10 percent in January compared to a year before. Prices of used vehicles were over 40 percent in the same time period. Most importantly, remember that this is temporary. Chip shortages will end, dealer lots will fill back up and prices will come back down. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and that you’re driving to meet it in your next dream car.
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