Electric cars set for 8,388-mile Paris-Africa adventure with 5,600W solar panels

In honor of the centennial anniversary of Citroën’s historical African expedition, the French automobile brand is sending four electric vehicles on a 8,388 miles (13,500 km) trek across Africa solely powered by custom-made solar panels this October.

As PV Magazine reports, La Croisière Verte is a highly anticipated journey from North to South Africa. The objective is to demonstrate the long-distance potential of compact, lightweight electric vehicles, but they won’t be traveling alone.

Each of the pioneering four vehicles is expected to carry 5,600 W of solar panels that will be installed along the road for static or stationary charging. However, the cars, as well the panels, have been engineered specially to complete the arduous journey.

Not your average solar panels

La Croisière Verte is the brainchild of a French entrepreneur, a former Dakkar Rally racer, and a Dutch engineer dedicated to pushing the limits of sustainable travel into the next generation using custom-engineered solar panels.

Equipped with rooftop panels, the Citroen AMI fleet will still require a robust charge at peak hours. 5,600 W of solar panels will fold out from portable mini-panel packs on the road.

According to PV Magazine, the custom-designed and ultra-thin model uses monocrystalline interdigitated back-contact technology from Singapore-based Maxeon. PV module manufacturer Mito Solar also developed special PV system for the trip. With a 22 kW of PV capacity, and most domestic systems, at least, have a capacity between 1 kW and 4 kW, the cars will be able to travel long-distances.

According to the report, he racks are designed with fiberglass-coated PET foam, whereas in most cases, they are made of aluminum or steel, which will accommodate the summer heat that these compact vehicles will be traveling through. A simple MPPT charge controller will boost the battery which they designed using off-the-shelf equipment for better inverter functionality.

Even the Citroën vehicles were altered beyond the solar-paneled roof for their ambitious journey. Larger batteries will replace the standard 6 kWh battery to extend the car’s capacity by 43.5 miles to 155.3 miles (70 km to 250 km).

Engineers added drum motors, also, or a motorized pulley, to the rear wheels. They doubled the height of the load-bearing part of a car’s frame, too, known as the chassis, for extra ground clearance. With these adjustments, the electric cars are set to drive through Africa.

The road trip of a lifetime won’t be luxurious, most likely

Beginning in Paris, the four vehicles, maintaining a speed of 28 mph (45 km/h), will average 124 miles (200 km) per day. The electric cars will cross to the African continent from Marseilles to begin their epic from Morocco to the very tip of Africa: Capetown.

The solar panel-powered electric car exploration of Africa follows another voyage of a similar nature, as the same Dutch team successfully drove across the continent in an electric Skoda thanks to solar panels.

However, as that expedition suggests, the voyage is set to be more like an adventure, as the drivers had to sleep on a rooftop tent, as PV previously reported.

So, the car will also function as their home. But they hope to demonstrate that “it is possible to implement sustainability in everybody’s daily lives,” the team stated to PV Magazine .