The Lightyear One is the first-ever long-range solar-powered car.

With help from the sun, this all-electric vehicle can drive almost 500 miles on a single charge.

The car is currently available for preorder now and goes into production starting in 2021.

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Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: This is the Lightyear One, an all-electric luxury car that, according to its creators, can drive almost 500 miles on a single charge. Compare that to the average electric car that gets around 190 miles, and even Tesla's top Model S that manages an impressive 370. So how is 500 miles possible? It's because of these. The Lightyear One is powered by the sun using 54 square feet of solar panels covering the roof and hood. And Lightyear's 29-year-old CEO thinks his car can change the electric car market.

While the Lightyear One is first and foremost a plug-in electric vehicle that can fast-charge up to 354 miles worth of energy within an hour, its self-charging capability could find certain owners rarely even needing to plug their car in. The sun can add up to an additional 7 1/2 miles each hour to the vehicle's total range. In ideal conditions, its solar panels can generate over 12,000 miles worth of energy in a year. The car is set to hit production lines in 2021 and is available for preorder now.

The One's manufacturer, Dutch startup company Lightyear, was founded in 2016 by former members of a team of engineering students whose solar-powered vehicles won the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge race in 2013, 2015, and 2017. We asked the company's ambitious CEO, Lex Hoefsloot, to answer this question for us: Why solar power?

Lex Hoefsloot: So we set out to design a car that kind of completely eliminates range anxiety. What we realized is that there are two energy sources on Earth you can use, and that's either the Sun, and, at the same time, ordinary power sockets. And then the other part is that you have guaranteed clean energy, because, you know, you cannot guarantee that all the energy that comes from the power plugs is really clean.

What happened in 2016 is that we realized that the industry was still considering not really considering getting these types of cars to the market. And we saw huge potential on one hand because of what we'd done, of course, but also that the technology that we were using was improving dramatically every year.

Narrator: According to the company, the Lightyear One's battery alone is capable of up to 450 miles of driving range. On a sunny day, those solar panels will net you an additional 35 to 47 miles. Even faced with zero sunlight, heavy winds, and below-freezing temperatures that require the heating on the entire time, Lightyear still guarantees around 250 miles of range.

But while the Lightyear One's maximum driving range far surpasses that of even Tesla's top model, the car's four electric motors definitely won't keep up with a Model S. However, Lex says the car was never built to be a speed demon, trading fast acceleration time for faster road trips.

Lex: We really focused on making sure that people get from A to B as quick as possible, and therefore we needed superefficient motors. These superefficient motors require less torque than a normal car because we have four of them and we have less weight in the car. So the main purpose of the car is not to be as quick as possible at the traffic light, but to be as quick as possible to your destination.

Narrator: Although the Lightyear's efforts toward renewable energy are admirable, the general public has still been hesitant to adopt basic electric vehicles. Where in the car market do solar-powered cars even fit?

Lex: So what we believe is that this is a solution that will work for some markets, so electric cars that have quite a large battery and need charging infrastructure. And we see it as the second wave of electric cars, so electric cars that are just much more efficient. They'll really help get us to complete electrification of the whole fleet.

Narrator: Lightyear is taking preorders now for the first 500 cars for a reservation price of about $135,000. When the car finally hits Netherland production lines in 2021, the price is expected to start at about $170,000.

Despite the expensive cost, Lex isn't worried, as the price of solar technology continues to drop, which should eventually allow Lightyear to launch cheaper models.

Lex: It's a magical concept, right? That you have an independent entity that charges itself, and then you come back to the car, and it's charged again. And it's really cool to see people's reactions. They actually like that we combined the advantage of a combustion car with an electric car, so it might be the first electric car for them. And that for me is maybe the biggest goal.