 Hi my name is Marc and welcome back to the channel. Today we're talking solar cars. Solar energy has become one of the cheapest way to produce energy and it's also very safe and very clean. So if solar is such a good option why aren't we driving solar cars yet? Are solar cars a hoax or are they our future? My answer is going to surprise you. Especially since we were one of the first to buy a Lightyear Zero for which production was recently cancelled. We also have a reservation for a Scion by Sono Motors and that organization is in deep financial problem. So let's dive into the video. The first piece of the puzzle is the energy we need to drive the cars. Cars are often driven during the day to work but stand still 93% of the time. They are charged at night. But most energy is generated during the day by solar power for example. If you want to store that energy you need tremendous investments in storing and transporting the energy but also in charging infrastructure. Since the average commute in America is about 41 miles a day or 66 kilometers you need to be able to charge your car 66 kilometers during the day. If you're able to charge more than the daily usage you would actually be able to deliver it back to the network or store it in your battery packs. This would drastically decrease the amount of investments we need to do either in transmission of energy or energy storage. This is assuming that we have decent energy infrastructure to begin with. In a lot of places we don't have a great electrical grid. For those places the solar powered cars become portable power stations. These mobile power stations would be a game changer and it all sounds great on paper. But does it survive in the real world? Let's move to the second part. Can a solar car generate enough power? And to answer that question we'll look at the three most popular solar powered cars. Let's start with the biggest and baddest of them all the light year zero. The light year has about five square meters of solar panels and charges a theoretical 70 kilometers during the day. But that's theoretical. I think in the real world it will only do about 22 kilometers. So that's only a third of what we need. The second car we're looking at is the Seon by Sono Motors. This car charges about 16 kilometers during the day. But in real world situations we expect it to be about 12. Which is way too little. The third car we're looking at is the Aptera. It has about three square meters of solar panels. It will charge about 40 miles during the day which is more than 60 kilometers. But if we translate that into real world usage it will be about 13 miles. Which is again only a third of what we need. 21 kilometers. The third question is how do you realize energy efficiency? And that is really simple for cars. The car needs to be light and it needs to have low drag. Which means it flows through the air without a lot of resistance. Lightyear does this really well. They have a history in solar racing and they have a lot of experience with new materials making the car very light and having very low drag. Aptera takes this even further with an even lower weight and an even lower drag. They do this by only having two people in the car where the Lightyear can transport up to five. Seon is the worst of the bunch but they can transport up to five people and the car is a lot cheaper bringing us to price. The Aptera will set you back 26,000 euros transporting two people. The Seon will cost 30,000 euros transporting up to five and the Lightyear Zero was supposed to cost 300,000 euros. Both the Seon and the Lightyear started out being cheaper but got more expensive during the production process and the Lightyear eventually never made it into production. So where does this lead us? Are solar powered cars a hoax? And the honest answer is they kind of are. There's currently no solar powered car which you can drive for your daily commute on solar energy. Period. But the second question is are solar powered cars the most likely way forward and the honest answer is yes they are. First off it would cut the investments we need to do in the power grid in half. Solar powered cars can charge themselves partly and once they are connected to the grid they charge a lot faster because they are more efficient. Second they push the world forward. They use new designs, new materials and new types of components like the motors they use and we need those innovations to push our world forward. None of this is created by the existing car brands. It took Tesla to move the car industry into the EV world and it's going to need brands like Apptera, Seon and Lightyear to pioneer the next step in this evolution. The final question is will these new car companies make it? Sonomotors is in serious financial trouble and they're re-raising funds and Lightyear cancelled the Lightyear one and we stepped out last year as investors when they dramatically raised the price for the car. We won't be driving a fully solar powered car anytime soon but if companies and governments who are making the transition to clean energy are serious about their ambitions we should be driving them in the future. Thank you Voice for making these videos possible and thank you all for watching and I would love to see you in the next one. Cheers!