a more holistic, what we call end to end machine learning. approach where we really teach the machine to drive by example rather than trying to code - those rules in by hand. thank you so much, jamie. now, arjo, we re going to come to you and you ve made such great strides with your prototype model of the lightyear solar car. it s expensive. what i really want to know is when am i going to be able to afford one? when are we going to get to a commercially viable, affordable, family sized solar car? so, it s a very fair question, right? we were founded with the mission to provide clean mobility for everyone. and obviously the lightyear 0 that we are selling now for 250,000 euros, it s clearly not for everyone. the way to view this, this first car is really a technology demonstrator, we re building it in a limited series and this is the main reason why this first car is so expensive. so, the key is in scaling up.
we actually offer a lot more. for one, we re leveraging the battery to provide electricity for customers, particularly in roll out, in electrical outage situations, we can actually use it for our home, for multiple days at a time. also without the engine, we re able to take advantage of that space up front and basically turn it into a front trunk. and then, of course, performance in the vehicle isjust outstanding. with an ev, you get that near instant torque that we talked about earlier which gets you up to 0 60mp in mid four seconds. i mean, it s fast, so. we ve got a question from gilbert in lebanon now, coming in from the video link. if you can unmute your microphone and give us your question. my question is, why - was the lightyear 0 released so late when it was - expected much earlier? so, thorny question there for arjo. why was the lightyear so late?
with the batteries as well as the motors actually can be more more tough and in many ways a better tool for the customer. let s move on now to arjo. arjo, you work in engineering solar cars and again, no less groundbreaking. i want to talk about how you got drawn into that as the thing that you wanted to do. i understand there is something called the solar vehicle race across australia. tell me about that and how you got into this field. back in 2012 we were studying at the technical university in eindhoven and we founded this solar car team to participate in the world solar challenge but for the first time in 2013 when we competed for the first time, it was the first time they introduced a new class for vehicles that notjust have to arrive from darwin to adelaide as fast as they can but that were also scored on how many people you take, how practical the car is and how much external energy you still need from the grid.
or running on solar. thank you, arjo. now, linda, of course, electrical vehicles in general help with emissions and help even more when they re powered with electricity from renewable resources. all this is great, but the batteries are a problem, aren t they? they contain a lot of rare earth metals that need to be mined at scale. for example, lithium is a key component and you can get that out of mines say, for example, in chile s atacama desert. is there a plan in place to mitigate those sort of environmental threats that come from electric vehicle technology? yes, absolutely. i think mining responsibly is very important and it s one of the things that ford were very attuned to. we ve joined some of the coalitions to help ensure that we are mining responsibly. and i think you re absolutely right, that electric vehicles in general are better
was designed adequately to be able to tow and haul and do all the same things that current truck customers can do. moving on from that point, what i want to know, arjo, the netherlands is lovely when the sun is shining. when it is cloudy out there, what sort of range on average can i expect out of your vehicle in northern europe? it s an electric car. you can still charge it so you want to drive at night it has a battery and you can drive yourself 625 kilometres just on the battery and the solar panel continuously trickle charges the battery and on a single day if you are in full sun and in a good place you may add up to 70 kilometres of range from the sun that does not sound like a lot compared to the 625 but in practice we don t use our car every day we don t use it every day for very long trips, while the solar system is always on so the way to look at it is how much do you get ina year. so, in one year, even