Lightyear

Lightyear started in 2016, when five alumni of Solar Team Eindhoven set out to bring clean mobility to everyone. Lightyear turned their experience with solar race cars into a long-range electric car with solar cells built into its body, the Lightyear 0.

The company that built that car, Atlas Technologies, was declared bankrupt in January 2023. Lightyear restarted a few months later with a narrower focus: solar roofs that carmakers can build into their own vehicles. In September 2026 Lightyear and Volkswagen showed the result in the Mission Efficiency car, with a 370-watt solar system in the glass roof and rear window that adds up to 30 kilometres of range per day.

Lightyear brought a different view of the car to NEON. Olaf Borsboom, one of the PhD candidates, said Lightyear's way of looking at mobility opened his eyes: cars are over-designed, and for 95 percent of the time their full capabilities go unused. The future Lightyear saw was one of vehicles designed for a specific use case, with powertrains optimised for how they interact with the grid. The models and tools from NEON were meant to let fleet owners order vehicles tailored to their own use.

That view shaped NEON's work package on electric cars and trucks, led by Theo Hofman. With Lightyear and TNO, its PhD candidates worked on optimal powertrain design and on designing whole fleets and families of vehicles. Fabio Paparella, Maurizio Clemente and Olaf Borsboom defended their theses on this work in 2024 and 2025.