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This Compact Solar-Powered Car Turns Into a Tiny Power Plant

It can run 20 kilometers, or just over 12 miles, on solar panels installed on the car's body alone.
Images: P-MOB

Our cars may be driving us to dystopia, but we should still welcome cleaner, more efficient alternatives—hybrids and electric cars are improvements over their internal-combusting bretheren. And if that electric car just happens to run on solar, well then, all the better.

It's long been a popular idea among the eco-inclined to pair electrics with solar systems: The Elon Musk-backed startup SolarCity is already selling solar panel charging stations, and the Mahindra Revo E20 comes packaged with one. But a new electric car project aims to do them one better: create a mini that sports its own solar panels, and runs on the sun alone.

Meet the P-MOB, or the "efficient electrical personal mobility." It can run 20 kilometers, or just over 12 miles, on solar panels installed on the car's body. It weighs just 1,200 pounds, and can reach speeds of 62 miles per hour.

According to the green blog Earth Techling, it was created by "Dr. Pietro Perlo, the CEO of Interactive Fully Electrical Vehicles, an Italian SME dedicated to e-vehicle development."

The European Union shelled out 2.8 million euros to support the project, which aims to advance electric car technology. According to the P-MOB team, the primary advances of the new prototype are its "novel approach to advanced systems integration focusing, among other things, on solar cells, e-motor and magnetic torque control, power-energy management, distributed accumulators and technologies to enable e-vehicles to put power back into the grid when not in use."

Indeed, the car's solar panels charge the grid when it's not in use. Its developers are aiming for commercial feasibility, and it may serve as a useful urban transport vehicle for the Zipcar set, or for last-mile situations where folks need to get between mass transit hubs and their home. It's still a prototype, but it's a promising one—as long as your trips are short.