Tino - A Solar Car for Daily Use

Abstract

Tino - an electrically powered solar car is the result of our development effort to replace gasoline fueled-automobiles in certain areas. The light weight glass fiber reinforced plastic (GFK) is the main material for the car body construction. In this newly designed car a conventional solar panel is integrated into the car roof. With 80 Wp it feeds the independent electrical system, i.e. the lighting and indicator circuit. Another novel feature is the arrangement of the batteries in two packages in the front and the rear of the car, which can easily be exchanged by a trolley within a few minutes. Equipped with normal lead-acid batteries the 550 kg light car has a range of almost 80 km. This value can be exceeded by using other battery technologies, i.e. Ni/Cd, Na/S, Zn/Br or a second battery set. In order to reach zero pollution, a stationary solar “petrol” station of about 800 Wp is required. This relatively low power requirement is only possible when the energy consumption of the car is low, and a light-weight car is used. In the future a demonstration project with five cars of similar body construction and a 3 kWp solar “petrol” station is planned. The photovoltaic performance and different electical motors in combination with other battery technologies will be investigated with respect to the best overall efficiency.