{"id":69132,"date":"2026-08-08T18:00:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/69132\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:00:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:00:55","slug":"bmw-backed-student-ev-looks-like-a-homemade-cybertruck-but-ends-the-day-with-more-charge-than-it-started","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/69132\/","title":{"rendered":"BMW-Backed Student EV Looks Like A Homemade Cybertruck But Ends The Day With More Charge Than It Started"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Deep Orange 17 uses 1,700 solar cells and promises surplus energy after a typical urban commute <\/p>\n

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Clemson\u2019s Deep Orange 17 wraps more than 1,700 solar cells around its ultra-light body.<\/p>\n

The 1,212-pound coupe claims a surplus after a 12-mile daily urban commute.<\/p>\n

BMW<\/a>-backed research explores solar power as a part of an EV\u2019s propulsion strategy.<\/p>\n

Solar panels on an EV<\/a> are usually the kind of feature that sounds far more useful than it turns out to be. Clemson University\u2019s Deep Orange 17 might actually flip that on its ear. The team there worked with BMW<\/a> to wrap more than 1,700 photovoltaic cells around a tiny EV coupe that looks like a homemade Cybertruck, and the result, they say, adds more energy than it uses over a normal day of urban driving. Don\u2019t get too stoked yet, though; there\u2019s a lot to break down.<\/p>\n

Read: VW Fired Its Lawnmowers And Hired 100 Sheep<\/a><\/p>\n

Developed by 16 graduate students alongside BMW\u2019s research and development team, the prototype is called the Luminetta. Clemson says it was designed around a 12-mile (20 km) daily commute. It\u2019s unclear how many folks have just a 12-mile commute but it clearly doesn\u2019t apply to most. That said, the car is designed to soak up sunlight both when parked and when moving.<\/p>\n


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The big issue, of course, is that this is not remotely a normal car<\/a>. In the metal it\u2019s all flat angles and improvised paneling. Deep Orange 17 weighs just 1,212 pounds (550 kg), or roughly a quarter of the mass of many similarly sized production vehicles. Its multi-material structure combines steel, aluminum, carbon fiber, and 3D-printed metal joints, while regenerative braking, torque distribution, and optimized drivetrain controls all work toward the same goal of using as little energy as possible.<\/p>\n


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\n Clemson University \/ BMW
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Clemson and its Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE partners modeled sunlight and environmental conditions in Greenville, South Carolina; Frankfurt, Germany; Madrid, Spain; and Mumbai, India<\/a>. Across those locations, the university says the solar system could generate enough surplus electricity to add an average of 31 miles (50 km) of driving range per day. That\u2019s groundbreaking regardless of all the other caveats here.<\/p>\n

Sure, it\u2019ll take a bevy of other innovations to apply this sort of thing to a modern production vehicle. But rather than simply being able to power a car with the sun, this one is proving that it\u2019s technically possible to gain more energy than one would use on a very short\u2026 commute.<\/p>\n

Photos: Clemson University \/ BMW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deep Orange 17 uses 1,700 solar cells and promises surplus energy after a typical urban commute Clemson\u2019s Deep…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20955],"tags":[6213,21039,1098,3238],"class_list":["post-69132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bmw","tag-bmw","tag-bmw-concepts","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-fuel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}