Technology

This is a neat project....and terrible reporting.

Did they start out with any charge? How long to charge it fully via solar? How long it took them to do their trip? You could easily read this and think they did it by driving the full range (one of the few stats they give) out every day unless you're knowledgeable enough to see what they're not telling you. Is that range at 30mph? People are reading range figures and thinking, "well, gee, the EVs I can buy only do X and this does Y!", which isn't comparable at all without how that range is defined. If those figures shouldn't be compared to regular cars, then say it in the article! This is a 20-30 mile a day charged-by-solar-in-the-desert-near-the-equator vehicle, which isn't nothing, but not really as presented. Greenwashing (it's probably not) or whatever this should be called doesn't help the needed planetary shift away from fossil fuels.

Looking for other reporting (where are other commenters finding the duration of the trip?):

Guardian - no mention of time.

bonus: “We hope this can be an inspiration to car manufacturers such as Land Rover and BMW to make it a more sustainable industry. The car was actually very comfortable in the off-road conditions as it is very light and does not get stuck.”

Remind me how it was so lightweight again? Does it have LR & BMW level noise damping? It surely had AC and all that right? I don't know because that info wasn't provided. You don't need to convince LR and BMW, you need to convince consumers to go without those.

Daily Mail - no mention of time

Designboom - no mention of time

Jalopnik - no mention of time, which is disappointing for a car specific site

This is a cool project and it's cool university students did it, but why leave out such a misleading pieces of information? It's bandied about as a "showing people it's possible" thing as in, "you could have a solar car!", but leave out all the bits that really make it possible, like forgoing AC or the daily miles driven. That none of the reporting on this has this information either means [puts on tinfoil hat] it's a vast conspiracy to make green stuff look more palatable [tinfoil off], it's all confluence of interest in making it look more palatable, or the information just wasn't given out, or they're all referencing the same source news-wire style. Frustrating.

Where's the real information? I feel like we're in a race against time to move away from fossil fuels so things like this need to not be misleading.