The Solectria Sunrise was an innovative electric passenger car, designed to be as efficient as possible to produce long range from available battery technology.
Created by Solectria Corporation of Woburn, Massachusetts (since acquired by Azure Dynamics Corporation), it was never produced beyond several prototypes, although significant effort was made to make the design worthy of mass-production—including crash testing.
The Sunrise is known for having achieved 375miles on a single charge, during the 1996 American Tour de Sol[1] competition. A Sunrise was driven 217miles from Boston to New York city "on a single battery charge, negotiating everyday traffic and highway speeds up to 65 miles per hour" (104 km/h).[2]
In 2005, a single prototype as well as the moulds necessary to produce the composite chassis and body were sold and now belong to a hobbyist-led project to produce a similar vehicle as kits, to be known as the Sunrise EV2. See Sunrise-ev.com.