American Solar Challenge 2003 Starts

Ryan Kingsbury writes "The world's longest solar car race kicked off to a sunny start today in Chicago! The American Solar Challenge, which is only held every two years, runs 11 gruelling days along historic Route 66. Race updates can be found at the official site. One big surprise was that last year's winner (University of Michigan) didn't make it through prerace qualifications. This will certainly give some lower budget teams a chance at gold. Details of qualifications can be found here."

Comments

what a waste

[mooface]

It'd be much better if the students pursued smaller, more discrete projects that they could truly get involved with. It's sad that many engineering students end up doing things like PR, fundraisers, etc etc instead of engineering -- and trust me, that is what happens at places like UM. They don't have to be ruined by paperwork 2 years into a bachelors degree. They'll have plenty of time in the real world to trade useful engineering skills for that...

Re:what a waste

[xenocide2]

You're absolutely correct, these engineering students aren't researching new manufacturing techniques. Of course, they're also undergraduate students, typically in mechanical or electrical engineering, from a public university. Of interesting note is that occasionally students get Master's by tackling something like a power tracker system. The design goes into lots of realistic engineering methods. Quite simply, there's a challenge in simply selecting a body shape; one must balance aerodynamics with power generating surface area and weight.

Quite frankly, you'll never see untested technology being used in these sorts of endevors. Its far more profitable to start a company to research, develop, promote, produce and sell these sorts of technologies. And really, you don't need to race a car in order to test out your newfangled gallium-arcenide solar cells.

That said, I believe that the well funded Michigan team brought in a researcher from germany for his new process that created mircopyramids or some such, increasing surface area over simple flat surfaces. Of course its incredibly expensive, but being sponsored by half the big motor companies in the area helps out.

Re:what a waste

[tsangc]

It's sad that many engineering students end up doing things like PR, fundraisers, etc etc instead of

I disagree. Proposing an project, selling the idea to stakeholders, marketing, project management etc are all parts of real life engineering. No engineer sits at a desk all day and works purely on technical design work. They're also excellent things to put on a resume for jobs later on.

That and not everyone wants the same goals out of the project. They might be from other parts of the university like the business school or students who are looking to do something more people oriented instead of their normal engineering studies.

Some Results?

[Talking Goat]

I'm all for the innovation that is spurred in these sorts of competitions, but I'd really like to see what some of the real-world results have been from this kind of technological refinement. I hate to this that all this effort was being expended without any extrapolation into regular, everyday technological usage.

Re:Some Results?

[xenocide2]

The payoff is experience. Undergraduates get real world experience designing, building and testing cars. With the growing need for alternative power cars, and the testing of the market, "regenerative braking experience" might be something to put on a resume for the budding mechanical engineer.

Re:Kind of Ironic

[Klimaxor]

by that means, everything is counter productive when it comes to solar power research. lets see
Computers are used for CAD draw-ups, those computers were transported using some kind of fossil fuel. I don't really see how "student time spent" really falls in that catagory though. Without spending time, there is no research, without research, there is nothing new, and when there is nothing new, life just plain fucking sucks.

How about FUEL-CELL races ???

[zymano]

I am never interested in Solar car races but Fuel Cell Cars would peak my interest since cars could be using this technology in the coming years.

A sport I'd be interested in...

[ChristianBaekkelund]

Now, it's a "sport" like this that I could actually get interested in...if only this were on ESPN more often, or similar, I'd definitely be watching such a whole lot more.

Energy Budget

[Bios_Hakr]

Small rant follows:

Why have mechanical linkages up front only to have servo-activated linkages in the rear? Seems like having servos would eat into your energy budget pretty quick.

People have to realize that electric cars should not have power anything. What is the point of trying to be environmentally concious when you are blasting your AC during the summer? You just can't do it.

If you want to make a statement about saving the planet, then just buy a gasoline powered car with rack-and-pinion steering, manual windows, no AC, no radio, etc... You get all the benifits of gasoline and the added bonus of using as little of it as possible.

Well

[PHPhD2B]

If they have clouds? Well, mostly clouds do not equal complete darkness ... the fact that photovoltaic cells are frequently called solar cells does not mean that you have to see the sun in the sky for them to work ... they are cells, meaning they convert light into electricity. Cloudy -> less light -> less electricity but NOT a standstill.

As far as the engineering aspects go, I have a couple rhetorical questions:

How realistic is it that a bunch of students will be able to

1) develop new types of photovoltaic cells?

2) develop new, more efficient electric motors

Those are the kinds of things that have been through a lot of development already and will need tons of resources in terms of finances, facilities and manpower. It is wholly unrealistic to expect a group of undergrads (and possibly grads) to make any sort of strides in those areas.

What the students are doing well is taking existing technology and putting it together in well-developed and increasingly well-refined packages.

Making technical progress isn't always about developing an even fancier motor or PV array. Technical progress is often about finding new ways to put together existing technology.

People who complain about undergrads not researching new types of PV cells simply have no concept of what they're actually asking, and certainly have no appreciation of the ingenuity of many of the Solar Car designs and the technical developments they in many ways represent.

new technologies

[Fred Ferrigno]

The problem is, any time some new technology comes out that improves solar efficiency, every team has to have it or they have no chance. These cars are already ridiculously expensive, and if you let the teams go hog wild, the winner would by decided by their budget rather than talent or effort -- well, more than it is already.

That's the nature of racing

[Moderation abuser]

And what spurs development. Everyone is looking for a technical advantage over the other guy, no matter what that is. I don't see it as a problem that one team wins because they've put together a better technical solution. It's not as if we're talking about driver skill or anything.

The amount of effort you put into something is irrelevant if you're making that effort in the wrong direction.

Re:Aerodynamics?

[jollespm]

I did computer simulation for a car on SunRayce. The single most important variable in the design of the mechanics of the car is weight. You could have made the car look like a brick and it wouldn't have mattered, if it was light weight.

Our car was tested in a wind tunnel and had a CD of 0.05 or something crazy like that. For reference, most modern automobiles are in the .25-.32 range. Unfortunately for our car it was heavy.