As the world comes to terms with the ongoing EV race, the electric vehicle ecosystem continues to grow and of course, the development of these cars is now reaching new heights. And in that regard, Humble Motors, a California-based electric vehicle startup, has unveiled its first concept SUV called the Humble One. But this is not any regular EV. Let us elaborate.
The Humble One is a solar-powered SUV,
making it the first of its kind in the world. Instead of a regular roof (or a
panoramic glass roof as is the trend these days), the Humble One features over
80 square feet of engineered photovoltaic cells that capture sunlight and
transform it into energy. This generates enough electrical power to increase
driving range by nearly 96 kilometres a day. Of course, aerodynamic efficiency
plays a huge role with respect to range of an EV and in that context, the
Humble One boasts of a drag coefficient of 0.25. Pretty clean indeed.
Humble is certainly not sandbagging when
it comes to range and performance numbers. The Humble One can deliver a maximum
driving range of 805 km and the electric motor can pump out a maximum output of
1020hp. These numbers will have any Tesla vehicle worried. The Humble One
concept SUV measures over 5 meters in length. That's longer than most premium
sedans out there. However, in spite of its considerably large foot print, the
One weighs 1814 kilograms. That's pretty light for an EV given that most
performance EVs weigh over 2 tons.
And how do you charge an electric vehicle
that's powered by solar energy? Well, you just leave it under the sun. Heck,
you don't even need Tesla's network of superchargers. The company has, however,
not provided much details about the exact time it takes to charge from 0 to
100%, something we are very eager to know. We also wonder what happens on a
rainy day. Well, this is still a concept and far from production. Still, the
carmaker has revealed that they have received more than US$ 20 million in reserved
pre-orders and its US reservations increased 426% last month.
