The Charge Around Australia project will power a Tesla electric car with the team’s 18 printed plastic solar panels, each 18 meters (59 feet) long, which will be rolled out alongside the vehicle to capture sunlight when it needs to be charged.
Paul Dastoor, the inventor of printed solar panels, said the University of Newcastle team will not only test the panels’ durability, but also their potential performance for other applications.
“This is actually an ideal testing ground for giving us information on how we would use and power technology in other remote locations, such as space,” Dastoor told Reuters in the north Sydney town of Gosforth.
Printed solar is a lightweight, laminated PET plastic that can be produced at a cost of less than $10 per square meter.
The plates are made on a commercial printer originally used to print wine labels.
Dastoor said using the panels to power a car would make Australians think more about electric vehicles and could help ease their “range anxiety”.
“(The) community is looking for such answers to the problems they face day in and day out related to climate change,” he said.
On their 84-day Tesla journey, the team plans to visit about 70 schools to give students a taste of the future.
When asked what Elon Musk, creator of the Tesla car and founder of Tesla Inc. TSLA.O, could say about the CAA project, Dastoor said he hoped he would be satisfied.
CAA “demonstrated how our innovative technology is now being combined with its developments to create new solutions for the planet,” Dastoor said.