If the battery runs out on a new electric car when you aren’t near a power outlet—in the middle of the wilderness on a camping trip, for example—all you have to do is wait: The car is plastered with solar panels that can charge itself.
In day-to-day life in a city, if you have a short commute or just use the car for errands, you might never need to plug it in. The Sion, from a millennial-run German startup called Sono Motors, can go a little more than 18 miles a day using energy from the solar panels alone.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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