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Solar Car To Retrace Cross-Australian Route
Dave Snowdon writes "Its been 20 years since Quiet Achiever, the first solar car, crossed Australia from West to East (~4000km). Sunswift 2, the UNSW solar car is set to retrace the original route, in order to set a new transcontinental record. The original car took 21 days, Sunswift is expected to complete in less than 7."
wow, that is pretty interesting. i wonder how far away a commercial application is.
I'll be happy when they can manage that in the UK. They might be lucky to catch an hour of sun in a day.
Wouldn't it be easier to cross a continent where it is thin, like crossing America at the level of Panama?
...for everyone who wants to travel across australia in less than 8.5 days ...when the sun is shining.
However, I digress. Kudos to UNSW for taking steps to put environmentally sound cars on the market. Granted, this technology won't be applicable everywhere. For the forseeable future, people are still going to need gas-powered cars. Though, if these are cheap enough (once mass produced), it might be very economical to have one around for daily use and only bring out the gas-powered ones on long hauls/cloudy days. Anyone know how long (on a full charge) this car can go without a significant amount of light? That's going to be a make or break factor.
The original car took 21 days, Sunswift is expected to complete in less than 7
If the original thingy took like, 21 days, and this new thingy is going to take 7 days, then that means that
21/7 = 3
The new one is like, 3 times as good as the old one.
And people say us liberal arts students are good for nothing.
Twenty years and still no electric cars on *our* roads...
> 2: ?
> 3: Drive solar car.
> 4: Profit!
No, no, no! that's completely wrong!
1: Sell free software.
2: Sell free software.
3: Sell free software.
4: Profit!
5: Drive solar car.
How long would it take the average gas-powered car to cross Australia along that route?
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
has a small solar cell fitted to its roof. When it is hot (e.g. during the summer mostly) the energy is used to power a small air-condition unit (not the car's regular A/C) to keep the interior cold. Perhaps through gradual steps like that could the automobille industry move to a more ecologicaly sound era. It wouldn't be bad if my car could draw energy from the sun, even only or non-essential systems such as the car stereo. I personally do not believe that solar-only cars are anywhere near in the future. Perhaps hybrid cars, like toytota prius are the best bet for today. They can use both gas and electricity so one could use the first to travel long distances and the second to move inside the city.
When when I read this article, all I could think about was "Skin Cancer"...
a 3-fold improvement in 20 years means a 3^(1/20) = 1.056 improvement per year, or log(2^(1/1.5))/log(3^(1/20)) = 8.41 times slower than Moore's Law (doubling every 18 months). That's what you could compute with a math degree.
Or is it the other way around?
db
Cig:
ôô
Back in high school, I was involved in a solar car project. The main problem with mainstreaming solar cars is the solar cells. The 10 cm X 10 cm wafers of silicon are too delicate and rigid. Flexible solar cells made of plastic and organic materials promises to change this. Depending on how efficient they can be made to be, solar cells may make it into production cars one day.
The average solar insulation on earth's surface is about 100 watts per square foot (Obviously it may be more or less depending on weather and geological location). That means you need about 7.5 square feet of collection area for every horsepower, assuming photo-voltaic cells that are 100% efficient. In your dreams! Current PV technology is about 15-18% real efficiency.
Even with 'perfect' cells, A 3.5hp lawnmover would need a collector with an active surface the size of a 8'x4' sheet of plywood. Imagine what you would need for even a modest 75hp metro-sized two seater!
I don't even think they even make road-worthy cars that small, even gas powered.
Electric vehicles may yet have their day in the sun, but they certaintly won't be powered by it.
=Smidge=
> "1: Sell free software." :-)
;)))
>
> To bad thats not practically possible.
> Why would I buy your free software when I can download it for free?
Because I put in a fancy package, bundle it with some bells'n'whistles and 24 hour customer care line?
Please people, use what we were given by GNU instead of relying on half-remembered things from school.
$ units
1948 units, 71 prefixes, 28 functions
You have: 4000km
You want: miles
* 2485.4848
At a very reasonable 30 meters per second it would take 37 hours. If you were driving more quickly, say 45 meters per second it would take just over 24 hours. Even on completely empty roads I would not recommend travelling at more than 40-50 meters per second for safety reasons. Neither the roads nor the cars were really designed for such high speeds.
Did I mention I was trying to be funny?
db
Cig:
ôô
If you *do* want to experiment with warp factor nine, there *are* plenty of backroads in other areas of Australia, or there is the Adelaide-Darwin road. Once you cross the Northern Territory border, there's no speed limit whatsoever :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Now, back to the bonfire! Happy holiday!
db
Cig:
ôô
If you drove for two days across Australia, you'd be less than half the way there unless you were driving _ALL_ day.
Sorry if it seemed like I was trying to chew you out :). It's just that Hungry Jacks is also a former sponsor of my solar car team. The owner of the franchise is a graduate of my school, so he helped us out quite a bit in the past. I was just trying to clear up the misinformation (and include a shameless plug while I'm at it :)
That's a nice trip down memory lane. Years ago, Crowder College built a solar car for what was then essentially the same race (across Australia). They even brought the car to the shopping complex I worked at, I gave them $25 or $50 or something like that, and got a little piece of paper calling me a sponsor. I could have gotten a ride in the car for another $20 if I had shown up at the demonstration earlier; they were giving rides off the battery stores for almost 3 hours as the sun set. But the like of potential passengers was longer than the battery life, and I was at the end of the line.
The car was pretty cool, with a 'central tunnel' design and airplane-wing arc sides that would supposedly give the car an advantage in sidewinds (expected in the race). I would love to spend a couple of years working on a project like that; everything from electronics and power mamagement to aerodynamics and mechanical engineering. Of course they aren't practical, probably never will be, but give the lucky geeks that get to work on projects like this the fun of their work!
They didn't do too bad for a little college without much funding (lower-grade photovoltaics, less efficient motors, and 'bailing wire and duct tape' centric mechanics). They finished the race, I think just barely in the bottom half of finishers, and something like the 2nd best 'time per dollar spent' status. I'm sure I still have the certificate down in the bottom of a box somewhere, too. It was sort of fun getting into the whole thing, keeping track of the race and cheering the team.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
been there, done that. Perth to Melbourne in 3.5 days, taking into account sleeping at night and such. You'd be nuts to go any faster, it's too hot along the Nullabor.
But, imagine trying to "cowtrail" with panels spanning about 20x the footprint of the bike? BTW, I'm your neighbor almost, here in W. Michigan...:)
db
Cig:
ôô