This is a solar-powered campervan with 454 miles of range

What did you achieve during your time at university? Many hangovers and the ability to perfect beans on toast was as far as most of us got. Not this bunch from the Eindhoven University of Technology, though – they’ve managed to design, build and test this fantastic solar-powered campervan. Show offs.

Still, this is mightily impressive stuff. It’s called the Stella Vita and it’s from a team of students known as Solar Team Eindhoven. They’ve been rather successful in past World Solar Challenges, but the Stella Vita takes things one step further.

Not least because the team has just completed an 1,800+ mile road trip from Eindhoven to Tarifa in Spain on solar power alone. Strong.

Some more stats on the Stella Vita to go along with that aero-inspired teardrop shape, then. It can carry (and house) two passengers, it weighs 1,700kg (thanks to an aluminium chassis and glass fibre panels), is 7.2m long and 1.83m tall. Once parked up it can be unfolded too, with the roof popping up to allow standing room inside and a huge 17.5m2 area of solar panels.

Those panels feed power into a 60kWh lithium-ion battery, which makes for a range of 373 miles, or 454 miles on a particularly sunny day. Nice. Top speed is 75mph, which isn’t bad at all for a large campervan. 

This over a Volkswagen Grand California?

Images: Bart van Overbeeke