Solarky sunV: el cotxe solar de 8.000 dòlars que promet 55 km al dia

Did you know some of the biggest mobility stories happening in the world right now are actually happening outside of China? And they're happening with cars like this, this costs $8,000 and has a solar panel on the roof. Now I know we've been here before with the Light Year 1 which failed. But this is already on sale in places like Tanzania, Indonesia, and here in Thailand. My name is Elliott Richards and this is the Salaaki Sun V. So what should maybe sit in there thinking, Elliot, this is just a gimmick, this will never work, they proven it hasn't worked. Let me give you some context about why this works in this context right here. As we all know, Chinese cars have been great. They've shaken up the legacy automakers and given us affordable electric cars.

But you're a moder, for example, back in the UK, it's affordable there. But here in Thailand, Indonesia, it's still quite expensive. So I want to find out what happens at this end of the market, they're really affordable end of the market for $8,000. So Salarky decided to take one of the best selling cars in China, something similar to the wooling mini EV. These have been wildly popular in China for a long time, and in Indonesia. But then place a solar roof on top. Now this gives 300 watts of solar power

powering the whole car. But it's not just this because this car's of very neat trick up its sleeve. Let me show you what I mean. Yeah, it's an extending solar roof. Other moment is 1.6 square meters, but it's going to extend to 3.2 square meters of solar power, directly charging the batteries. That's cool, like really cool. Look at that.

Now for those of you who skip ticks who are still sat at home thinking, this still isn't going to work. Couple of unique features about this car. First of all, it's weight. It's just 660 kilograms, so there's not a lot of heft to carry around. But secondly, this is why it doesn't work in things like the Tesla or the light year one. This has a 10.2 kilo-hour battery,

so the battery is very small. Give you enough range for pottering around the city. Now, you can charge this from zero to full in about two and a half days of reasonable sunshine. But you're never really gonna be charging it for that duration. This is a grazing car. So you go to the shops, five miles, park it there two, three, four hours and you top up your battery. You park it back at home after another five miles of driving, you top it up again. In theory in the place like Bangkok for fairly regular use, you might never have to plug this car in and that is why it's this special.

So on an ideal day you could add around 55 kilometers of range if you had perfect sunshine all day on a slightly overcast day like today, just a very hot. You can get around 30 to 40 kilometers of range with a bit of cloud cover. That's kind of fairly normal. So you can take it to the shops, potter around and never need to charge in, but it does have an AC charger if you do need to plug it in. No DC charger on this, it's just a slow AC charger, but it's only a 10 point to the kilowatt battery. Therefore it's very quick to charge anyway. It gives around the 150 kilometers of any DC range, which is a really good range from such a small battery. That's all because of the weight. Now talk about this in just a moment. It's also got a 15 kilowatt rear electric motor which gives it enough push to get around the Bangkok streets. We drove it here, no problems whatsoever. Accelerates into traffic very, very easily. The biggest thing about this

car is the weight and how have they done that? Well, how they've built this car is very different from every other electric car out there. First of all it's an aluminium chassis so the whole car is lightweight straight away. Secondly, every single body panel here is made from a polymer composite material. The wings, the bonnet, the trim, everything. So it really drops that weight down to 660 kilograms. So even with a solar panel on the roof, you can still get four adults in here and do 150 kilometers from a 10 kilowatt hour battery. These are unheard of figures and it's got air conditioning. I think a lot of other automakers should take a page out of Salarky's book and study it because we need to be focusing more on light-weighted ness and actual proper functionality and I think this car sits all of those boxes. So beyond the solar panel, what else do you get in this car?

Well you actually get a fairly modern interior as you can see. I've even got a screen up here but the most important thing, especially in Thailand, is air conditioning which I've just turned off. So proper knobs down there to turn the air conditioning on and off, you're heating and calling but on here I've got car play. I have the retractable roof control which is there. We've got it extended at the moment but I can also contract it. I've got my range and my drive mode over there and I've got this door open and it can detect I'm in the seat but also in the rear it has cameras and radar basically so beeps when I'm reversing so it doesn't come with everything and it comes with kind of what you need and nothing more. Down here I've got fairly simple dial controls for my drive modes and I've got two electric windows and at the

moment the car comes in one colour which is this mocker brown colour and an old school handbrake down there so yeah not the most advanced car in here but honestly more than enough and what most people actually need. Now for those you want to sit in the rear you do get some rear seats and this is a old school mechanical handle to pull them back and then you can get in and you can just about fit two adults in here another hot seats are quite hard but there is actually just about enough room and you can see out your window there over there there's enough headroom I've got lots of headroom and then you've got your obviously seat belts down there yeah basic on the back here there's a few other features as well these are customizable panels you can change the design of that that's just one of the demo colours just testing out the stickers.

And then for your boot and your rear. So this is the rear end. Looks quite nice. So you've got a side opening tailgate like that. And in here you have 70 liters of boot space like this. But if you do this, that's a 4 800 liters of boot space, which is really respectable. And one of the uses for this car will be transportation of good. So it'll be a two-seater and then you can do like transport things in the back that you need to. So it's multifunctional and they're expecting it to have many different uses,

because a lot of people will enjoy having a smaller foldable electric car like this. Right, it's an old school handbrake. For those of you who are wondering what this thing drives like, well, I'm going to tell you. I've retracted the roof, we can't have extended. I've put the handbrake off and off we go. Honestly it reminds me a lot like the wooing mini EV. We've driven a few times in China. Except this car charges itself. Now I'm not gonna tell you that this has the best steering, the best brakes, anything like that.

It's perfectly adequate for city driving, which is what we're doing now. And I'm gonna put into some fairly hairy Bangkok traffic. This is, I'm not actually ever driven in Bangkok and this is a slightly terrifying, I have to be honest. interesting this car comes with a three year warranty, the actually an eight year warranty on the battery which is pretty amazing to feel this. I mean completely the wrong lane. I'm gonna go the wrong way and get lost. No, not. Yeah so in terms of like suspension play and things like that, yeah I mean it could be improved it's a little bit crashier, a little bit noisy But that's because it's lightweight on the inside so yeah you can't expect much from

the handling of this but in terms of like pottering around the city like this it's absolutely fine. Acceleration is brisk. I think goes up to 80 kilometers an hour and it's got air conditioning which is probably the most important thing and a hot day like this is yeah you really need air conditioning. Yeah, I mean, some of the interior plastics fill on the cheaper side. I mean, I'm quibbling here. These are not really things you worry about when you're driving a car that's worth less than $8,000 brand new and could drive you around the city.

And essentially, you never have to charge it if you live somewhere like Bangkok. I don't know what the acceleration is like in terms of timings. It doesn't really matter in something like this. But my seat is a little bit far back, so that's better, a bit more upright. But the good thing about this car is you are sitting quite upright with lots of glass around, you see, got pretty good view. I mean, there isn't much to talk about in terms of the driving ability of this car.

It's adequate. Let's be honest, it's adequate. It's okay. In fact, it's easier. I mean, it's got power steering, so you can turn around corners very easily. I'm not going to stand here until you, this is the perfect solution to everyone's problems, because it's not. It fits a very specific problem that is here in South East Asia and some African countries. But Salaki should be congratulated for thinking outside the box with a plastic body, the solar roof on top because it does solve a specific problem in countries like Thailand. And for that, I think they should be congratulated for bringing some innovation into the EV world. So, well done Salaki.