Nowadays, electric vehicles are considered the best alternative to achieve sustainable urban mobility. However, the extended implementation is conditional to a sufficient number of charging stations and the design of a new power grid distribution. Indeed, the vehicle model that dominates the current market, electric or thermal motors, is ten times heavier than its useful weight (occupant plus luggage), so it is not efficient in the way it uses the energy.
In this article, an ultra-light electric vehicle with his own photovoltaic generator is proposed as an adequate vehicle prototype for sustainable mobility. This kind of vehicle does not need many charging stations and, because of that, the implantation is less complex than for other commercial vehicles.
To verify this proposal, a specific photovoltaic panel was designed, manufactured and evaluated for this kind of vehicles. It can reach a specific power of 27.24 W/kg in STC, higher than commercial solar panels.
An experimental study in a wind tunnel was conducted in order to know the influence of the photovoltaic generator in the drag coefficient, and to calculate the performance of the vehicle in an urban circuit.
The most important results are that the vehicle, at STC, can circulate at a maximum speed of 35 km/h, without the need to charge the battery from the grid. For the same conditions, if the vehicle circulates at the maximum speed allowed in urban circuits, 50 km/h, it would have a range of 200 km per kWh charged from the grid.