A team of 23 Dutch university students has built a solar-powered “ambulance” designed to bring healthcare to places where fuel, electricity, and passable roads are all scarce.
Solar Team Eindhoven, a student group at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, has unveiled Stella Juva, which it calls the world’s first solar-powered ambulance. But this isn’t an ambulance in the usual lights-and-sirens emergency sense – it brings medical care to patients rather than transporting them to a hospital.
Healthcare workers can use Stella Juva to perform blood tests, screen patients for tuberculosis and malaria, administer vaccines, and carry out pregnancy ultrasounds. That could allow common conditions to be diagnosed and treated earlier in remote communities where getting to a hospital can take hours – if it’s possible at all.
“Access to care shouldn’t depend on whether there’s access to electricity or fuel,” said Femke Maurits, partnerships manager for Amref Health Africa in the Netherlands, which advised the students on the project.
Stella Juva’s integrated rooftop solar panels generate electricity for both driving and powering its onboard medical equipment. The team estimates the EV will be able to travel up to 715 kilometers (444 miles) on a sunny day, meaning it won’t need to rely on charging stations while working in areas with limited infrastructure. However, Stella Juva has yet to prove that range under real-world conditions.
The roof uses AIKO’s All Back Contact (ABC) solar cells, which place the electrical contacts on the rear of the cell to increase light absorption, while silver-free metallization reduces the risk of microcracks. The cells are also designed to maintain their output in high temperatures – an important feature for a vehicle designed for hot regions.
Stella Juva’s battery is protected by PPG CoraChar SE 4000, an epoxy coating designed to slow the spread of heat and fire if a battery cell enters thermal runaway. PPG also provided a $46,250 (€40,000) grant toward the vehicle’s development.
Solar Team Eindhoven has plenty of experience building unconventional solar vehicles. Its previous projects include Stella Vita, a solar-powered camper, and Stella Terra, an off-road solar EV that completed a 620-mile test drive through Morocco and the Sahara in 2023.
The next test will matter more than the unveiling. The students will take Stella Juva to Kenya in August and drive it hundreds of kilometers using solar power. At two remote field locations, healthcare workers will simulate medical scenarios, including treating patients with tuberculosis, to see how well the mobile clinic and its equipment perform outside the university workshop.
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