Dutch Win World Solar Car Challenge

Sick Boy writes "The Dutch solar car Nuna II, using ESA space technology, finished first in the World Solar Challenge, a 3010 km race right across Australia for cars powered by solar energy. Having set off from Darwin on Sunday 19 October, Nuna II crossed the finish line in Adelaide in a new record-breaking time of 30 hours 54 minutes, beating the previous record of 32 hours 39 minutes set by its Dutch precursor Nuna in 2001."

Comments

Hooray! Electric cars for all please!

[adeyadey]

So the big question - are we getting close to practical electric cars? Ok the vehicles in this competition are a "tour-de-force" of solar technology, but perhaps one day we could really have cars with advanced light-weight cheap batterys (thanks to advances in laptop/mobile batteries), and solar panels to charge when you leave your car parked in daylight. Also add regenerative braking, a fairly rapid recharge cycle, and for longer journeys give the garages something to sell - they can "hot-swap" batteries for a fully charged one, for a price. Is that the future, or is it Hydrogen fuel cells? Or some combination of both?

Again, I just cannot figure why we still persist with nuclear, oil, coal, with all the attendant problems (pollution, wars over oil, etc), when we could cover a small proportiion of the deserts of the world with solar cells, and the roofs of our buildings, and the coasts with huge offsiore wind farms (British Wind Enrgy Association page) & tidal turbines, and have all the power we need?