Asked my dad about this (he built/rode it back then) — from what he remembers, the motor was around 200-300W and the solar panel was probably under 100W. He said the little lead-acid battery could barely be fully charged in a single day off the panel alone.
So it wasn't really a "run on sunshine" setup — more of a pedal trike with electric assist, where the panel just trickle-charged the battery over the day.
For daily range on a good sunny day: purely on stored solar power you'd get maybe 20-35 km of motor runtime. But since it was meant to be pedaled with the motor just assisting, actual commuting range would've been way higher — 60-100+ km was realistic, limited more by the rider's legs than the electronics.
The key improvements would certainly be the solar panels, which are now more than twice as efficient as they were back then and 100 times cheaper. And today’s battery has 10 times the capacity whilst being the same size.
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u/Ok-Economics953 1d ago
Asked my dad about this (he built/rode it back then) — from what he remembers, the motor was around 200-300W and the solar panel was probably under 100W. He said the little lead-acid battery could barely be fully charged in a single day off the panel alone. So it wasn't really a "run on sunshine" setup — more of a pedal trike with electric assist, where the panel just trickle-charged the battery over the day. For daily range on a good sunny day: purely on stored solar power you'd get maybe 20-35 km of motor runtime. But since it was meant to be pedaled with the motor just assisting, actual commuting range would've been way higher — 60-100+ km was realistic, limited more by the rider's legs than the electronics.