Fill up your car with sunshine for nothing!

Press, 22 June 1979, Page 13

Fill up your car with sunshine for nothing!

By the turn of the century we could be driving around in cars which make no noise, leave no exhaust fumes, and cost virtually nothing to run. The reason is simple enough. They will be powered by the sun.

Nor are such cars merely doodles on a designer’s blotting paper. Solar-powered cars have already been produced. Ford of America have already produced prototypes of a sun-powered car called the Solarus. Fuel cells are energised by rays of the sun and the solar power is collected and stored through energy receivers on the wings and roof.

Indeed, all the knowhow for cars powered by sunlight is now available to the world’s automakers. Already it is estimated that the experience gained on NASA moonflights put the possible date of a commercial solar car forward at least five years.

After all, the vast majority of spacecraft power, apart from the actual rockets, comes from solar cells. A decade ago, solar engeineering was little more than a few untried theories, although one American scientist, Dr Charles Escaffery, demonstrated what he claimed to be the world’s first sun-powered

car, a converted 1912 Baker.

Today, at least a dozen major motor manufacturers, including Ford, Toyota, Fiat, Mazda and Mercedes, are spending millions on cars that can be filled up with sunlight. Explains Dr Edouard Leclere, the research scientist in charge of Fiat’s solar development: “Unless something is done, petroleum-powered vehicles will be using over 40 per cent of the world’s dwindling oil supplies by the year 2000. “This simply can’t be allowed — particularly as the sun produces more power in a day than the world could use in 20 years. “At least half the world has enough sunshine to make solar-powered vehicles a very practical proposition. And less sunny nations can also make use of what sunshine they have. “Using the latest fuel cells, running the car out of the garage to stand for half an hour in the sun would give you enough power for a week’s driving.

“And even in winter, most countries have at least that amount of sunshine."

There are at least six ways of' fuelling a car vzith sunshine, but the Ita-

lians and Japanese are putting their money on adaptations Of the silicon cells used in space exploration. These, it is claimed, are proving far more efficient than the prev i o u s 1 y-tried selenium cells, and are spearheading a new advance in the solar transport field. Details of silicon-cell cars remain secret but it is known that the cells trap energy from the sun in a special battery which powers electric motors. And the latest cells do not even need sunshine — they will trap energy in almost any daytime conditions.

Dr Elliot Berman, of America’s Solar Power Corporation says using silicon cells to power cars and other vehicles is per-

fectly feasible — if expensive — right now. “Already rugged heavy cells suitable for automobile use have been developed which are only a lout a tenth of the cost of similar systems used in space, and prices are dropping all the time. “In our view, cut-price solar cells are all set to revolutionise the motor industry. Fusion power has the best long-term future of any power system, and the best fusion reactor we have is the sun.

“The great advantage is that once built, a sunpowered car’s running costs are virtually nothing.”

In Britain and America, development engineers are concentrating on a sunpowered, thermo-electric

engine which turns heat into electricity in one simple silent step and which already exists in prototype form.

The whole installation would fit into the boot of your car. It works on the basic principle that if wires of different metals are joined in a circle and the junction is heated — in this case, by solar cells — electric current is produced.

Batteries of these loops pass on electricity to four turbines, one behind each wheel.

Certainly it will be the car every lazy motorist dreams of — no cooling systems to worry about, very little lubrication and, of course, no visits to the filling station .. . “Any country situated

within 40 degrees noth or south of the equator is a potential candidate for almost complete solarpowered energy sources,” says a spokesman for Britain’s National Research and Development Corporation. “This takes in about three-quarters of the world’s population. Other countries, like Britain, France and Russia, will find it more difficult to be sun-sufficient, but it can still be done.”

But ironically, Detroit, where most of the world’s sun-car research has been done, will not be able to run its prototype on its streets. Unselfishly, America’s car capital, two degress too far noth, has designed its car for sunnier climes.