We built an RC car powered exclusively with solar energy, absolutely no batteries!
If you wanna check out the video, here's the link below:
Throughout our solar plane project last year, we gained some valuable knowledge and experience with solar panels and decided they deserved a second go on a project closer to the ground.
Check out that project here:
Before jumping straight into a large solar car build, we needed to make a small proof of concept to get an idea of the obstacles we might face.
A small, four cell car would do perfectly and we quickly assembled our test car using some strips of wood and spare parts we had around the workshop.
Our test car showed a lot of promise but its acceleration would drop almost entirely when it passed through shadows.
But despite that, this was still enough proof for us to go ahead with the build. We would use a spare ARMA chassis that we could modify to our needs.
With a little bit of trial and error, we figured out how many cells we would need to power up the motor. We recycled our pre-soldered cells from the wreckage of the solar plane.
With our ARRMA chassis modified and reinforced with a PVC tube, we could install our panels and see what the solar car was capable of.
The solar car moved, but barely. The weight of the car was too limiting and it would need a lot more power to move faster and further but luckily we had another set of panels to double the power.
After a successful test, another modification was required to extend the chassis and then we could install the second array of cells. Our car was ready for its street test.
It was a success! The car travelled around 2.5 miles all completely powered by the sun, no batteries at all.
It struggled through some shadows and the intermittent clouds showed how sensitive the cells were but the car was still able to make it an impressive distance.
If you enjoyed this article, please check out others over here!