Eleanor Solar Electric Vehicle

The brains at MIT are back with a new solar electric vehicle known as Eleanor. It might look pretty unwieldy and turn heads on the road for the wrong reasons, but heck – it is fast enough to move at a maximum speed of 90 mph, and is jam packed with technology which could potentially end up in hybrids and EVs of the future. The price tag might be a sore point though at $243,000 a pop, but the carbon-fiber racer Eleanor is currently being prepared for its inaugural race later this year. There are 580 silicon solar cells on the Eleanor, covering up to half a dozen square meters while generating 1,200 watts at any one time – more than enough to power a hair dryer or a couple of desktop PCs simultaneously. All power is stored in the 6-kilowatt-hour Genasun battery pack that makes up 693 lithium-ion cells.