{"id":589,"date":"2014-04-04T00:00:22","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T00:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/?p=589"},"modified":"2025-03-10T03:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T03:39:14","slug":"driving-into-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/driving-into-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving into the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

A consortium of Australian developers, headed by\u00a0Swinburne University<\/a>, has launched a prototype of the country\u2019s first home-grown solar electric hybrid sports car.<\/p>\n

Working with\u00a0Aurora Vehicle Association<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0SolarX<\/a>, whose immediate aim is to \u201cstrives to be the world\u2019s leading private entity advocating electric vehicles as a realistic mode of transportation\u201d the university has announced a road-ready model of an environmentally friendly two-seat sports car.<\/p>\n

The hybrid prototype, which features an electric and solar powered battery engine, was developed by engineering students from the university.<\/p>\n

\"solar<\/p>\n

It is a zero emissions vehicle, according to Swinburne Product Design Engineering senior lecturer, Dr Clint Steele.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as the sun is shining the car can keep going,\u201d Steele says. \u201cIt\u2019s unique in that we\u2019ve got batteries that do the hard work and the solar panels top them up. It has the ability to make drivers completely independent, so they don\u2019t need to rely on service stations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team are now working on developing the commercial strategy for the vehicle with the assistance of\u00a0SolarX<\/a>. While SolarX\u2019s immediate aim is to put Australia\u2019s first fully road-legal solar-electric hybrid car onto Australian roads, CEO Barry Nguyen believes the project has international potential.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intellectual property that we develop in these circumstances has the potential to be applied in other areas,\u201d Nguyen says. \u201cThere are many countries around the world with unresolved pollution problems crying out for innovative solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Nguyen has said that the hybrid sports car would be available for limited production. It will also serve as a platform to showcase environmentally-friendly technologies for potential licensing to other companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cSolarX will prove that zero- emission cars are a realistic mode of sustainable transportation, reducing the burden on the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The engineering team working on the project at\u00a0Swinburne University<\/a>\u00a0have reportedly received shares in SolarX Corporation as a reward for their efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A consortium of Australian developers, headed by\u00a0Swinburne University, has launched a prototype of the country\u2019s first home-grown solar electric hybrid sports car. Working with\u00a0Aurora Vehicle Association\u00a0and\u00a0SolarX, whose immediate aim is to \u201cstrives to be the world\u2019s leading private entity advocating electric vehicles as a realistic mode of transportation\u201d the university has announced a road-ready model…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-whats-new"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oryxpeople.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}