Design and development of the Sunswift eVe solar vehicle: a record-breaking electric car

The Sunswift project of the University of New South Wales, Australia, exists to provide university students with a multi-disciplinary engineering challenge, enhancing the true educational value of their degree with a unique hands-on real-world experience of creating solar–electric hybrid vehicles. The design and development of the low-drag ‘solar supercar’ Sunswift eVe car are described here, detailing the student-led process from initial concept sketches to the completed performance vehicle. eVe was designed to demonstrate the potential of effective solar integration into a practical passenger-carrying vehicle. It is a two-seater vehicle with an on-body solar array area of 4 m2 and a battery capacity of 16 kW h, which is capable of sustained speeds over 130 km/h and a single-charge range of over 800 km. Carbon fiber was used extensively, and the components were almost all designed, built, and tested by students with industry and academic mentorship. The eVe project was initiated in mid-2012, and the car ...