Even with an impressive driving range of 400 miles, there will be a time when you’ll have to plug in the Tesla Roadster – but there’s a new electric sports car hitting the market soon that may never need to be connected to a wall socket at all. Talk about ending range anxiety. Melbourne-based EVX Ventureshas revealed details about a new electric sports car that can drive all day using nothing but the power of the sun. The Immortus is a two-seater electric car that can travel an unlimited distance on sunny days thanks to 75 sq ft. of solar photovoltaic paneling on its exterior.

The Immortus borrows its solar race car technology from a project that was originally funded by Australia’s Aurora Solar Car Team. At only 1,212 pounds, the Immortus is an extremely lightweight and aerodynamic sports car that looks like nothing else that is currently on the road. Thanks to its solar panels, the Immortus only needs a small 10 kWh lithium-ion battery to power its twin electric motors. At night or non-sunny days, the Immortus has a driving range of 248 miles, but when the sun is out, the Immortus can travel an infinite number of miles, as long as your average speed is around 37 mph. EVX estimates that if you increase your speed to around 53 mph, the Immortus will have a total driving range of around 342 miles.

EVX hasn’t announced a production time frame, but it doesn’t expect to sell more than 100 units of the Immortus, which will have a price tag around $370,000.

“We’re not trying to be a Tesla,” says Barry Nguyen, CEO and co-founder of EVX Ventures. “Tesla is a mass manufacturer of cars, we’re designers of boutique custom electric cars and aftermarket products. There’s regulations in the US and Australia that allow for individually constructed vehicles. Essentially what that means is that if you contract a custom car builder with the designs and components, you can build a road legal car without the crash testing and the 5-10 million dollars you’d have to raise to do that. We plan to sell those cars in low volume.”

Even if EVX doesn’t plan to produce a significant number of the Immortus sports cars, the advances in the solar-powered technology could one day be used on more consumer friendly vehicles. Imagine how amazing it would be to drive an electric car that has zero range anxiety because it can run solely on the power from the sun.

Article from inhabitat.com

by Marc Carter