Wouldn’t you dream of a solar powered bus in which You with your family can take a long weekend through the rustic roads to the beach. The butterflies will welcome you with birdsongs in the midway and the bees will think Your vehicle as their friend as both of them are nature creatures powered from the sun.
How wonderful will be the journey and the destination and how full of nature and sustainability that will never leave any guilt of polluting the single most element of nature during Your travel. How wonderful would it have been if We get a camper bus powered by solar energy and solar energy only !
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Stella Vita from Dutch Students:
A solar powered motorbus or camperbus was seen in the last October on the roads of Madrid that looked just like an elongated teardrop on it’s long journey from the Netherlands to Southern Spain. The motorbus that is fully solar powered is the innovation of the Engineering students at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The team is named as Solar Team Eindhoven and they named their vehicle Stella Vita, which in Latin roughly translates for Life of Star.
The blue and white coloured huge tear shaped vehicle is created for the awareness of true sustainability in using transports. A group of 22 co-eds of Solar Team Eindhoven are the maker of Stella Vita, which is the world’s first entirely solar-powered camper.
With a length of about 23.62 ft or 7.2 metres, Stella Vita can cruise comfortably on the highway at the speed of 120 kmph with its weight of around 1700 kilograms. The expansive solar panels power it to travel about 740 kms on a bright and sunny day with keeping in the fact that there is a fridge, a coffee maker and even one or two laptop for the cruisers.
Stella Vita Outside:
According to one of the student Mr. Lotte Van Dasler ” We don’t call it a camper, we call it a self sustaining house on wheels. It’s because we are independent in terms of our energy”.
This self-sustaining “house on wheels,” features a teardrop design which slopes dramatically in the rear from the front. Undoubtedly, the design is not the most aesthetically pleasing but it’s a clever design. The long roof of the camper provides plenty of surface area for solar panels. To maximize this space further, two partitions are crafted just below the roofline that pop out on the both sides of the bus. It doubles the solar panel area effectively to 57.4 sq ft. The roof of the vehicle also pops up, and that increases the interior space of the camper which is accessible from the rear set of passenger-side emergency doors.
Stella Vita Inside:
In the inside there is a small cooking area and place for a fridge, both of which run on solar power. There is a toilet and place for a couch and a full-size bed spacing enough for two adults.The generated electricity is stored in a 60 kilowatt- hour Lithium-ion battery that allows a night time trip of upto 600 kms if needed.
The roof of the vehicle slides up to allow it’s occupants to stand straight inside for cooking. It can be elevated to a height of about 8.3 foot unfolded and an unfolded width of about 14.foot mainly for the solar panels.
The Future:
The Dutch Students are truely paving the future through their project. It’s true that the 3,000 kms of journey was not completed due to technical glitches but it shows the way how future is going into safe hands of students and innovators who are thinking for the planet seriously. For them sustainability is nether a word nor a choice but a hard and well planned mission to be achieved for our own sake.
Mr. Kjell Revenberg, the team manager of Solar Team Eindhoven ushered his hope for the students “They are the future, the next generation and can encourage and accelerate the transition to a more sustainable future”. He added “To accelerate this transition we are going to inspire as many people in Europe as possible for the sustainable future during our journey.”
(images acknowlegement: Solar Team Eindhoven and Reuters)