Enlarge / The Squad Solar City Car is a low-speed vehicle that uses the power of the Sun to charge its batteries. (credit: Squad Mobility)
It’s that time of year when the CES email spam goes into overdrive. I won’t be on the ground in Las Vegas in 2023 for the gigantic consumer tech trade show, but one pitch almost—well, ok, partly—makes me regret that, because it seems like an interesting idea. It’s a new city car from a Dutch company called Squad Mobility; a relatively ungainly thing if I’m honest, but one that suggests a tantalizing solution to the problem of city-dwellers needing EVs but not having anywhere to charge them.
That’s because the Squad solar city car, as its name suggests, uses the power of the sun to recharge its battery. Now, this is not a new idea; solar-powered cars have raced, albeit at quite low speeds, for many years now. Ars even rode in one, in Manhattan of all places.
But there’s always a trade-off. Those solar-powered racers are ultralight-weight creations, built with as little drag as possible. As day-to-day transport they would make even a vintage-car owner wince at the lack of creature comforts.
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