Slashdot Mirror
Dutch Win World Solar Car Challenge
Sick Boy writes "The Dutch solar car Nuna II, using ESA space technology, finished first in the World Solar Challenge, a 3010 km race right across Australia for cars powered by solar energy. Having set off from Darwin on Sunday 19 October, Nuna II crossed the finish line in Adelaide in a new record-breaking time of 30 hours 54 minutes, beating the previous record of 32 hours 39 minutes set by its Dutch precursor Nuna in 2001."
ik wens u met uw overwinning in Australie geluk.
While it's nice that we can get power out in the middle of nowhere (and face it, most of Australia is "the middle of nowhere"), doesn't the environmental damage posed by the building and throwing away of these solar panels negate much of the benefits of having a non-fossil fueled car?
That said, you'd think that a country with more cloudy weather would do better at squeezing the last little bit of energy out of a solar panel than somewhere sunny like Holland.
No? I zee zat zere ees no pleesing you. Zee dutch won! Iznt zat veird?
...now we've got a fRying dutchman.
--
Someone had to do it.
"I prefer a vehicle that doesn't hurt Mother Earth. It's a go-cart, powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction."
--
Rate Naked People! at FuckMeter (not work-safe)
The area of the contiguous 48 states (which is what's relevant here) is almost identical to the area of Australia. perhaps 3-5% bigger.
If you include Alaska (which is about 1/5th the size of the 48) in the total that's quite a bit bigger again, but still doesn't bring the US near 3 times the size.
The only problem with these cars is that it is hard to transfer the technology to real cars. These solar cars are covered with panels and are streamlined to go as fast as possible. They also have to be as light as possible for the same reason. Which makes the transfer that bit harder. That is not to say the race isn't a good idea. It's a great idea which enables peaple to have fun while investigating the power of the sun.
Michael Harris.
So the big question - are we getting close to practical electric cars? Ok the vehicles in this competition are a "tour-de-force" of solar technology, but perhaps one day we could really have cars with advanced light-weight cheap batterys (thanks to advances in laptop/mobile batteries), and solar panels to charge when you leave your car parked in daylight. Also add regenerative braking, a fairly rapid recharge cycle, and for longer journeys give the garages something to sell - they can "hot-swap" batteries for a fully charged one, for a price. Is that the future, or is it Hydrogen fuel cells? Or some combination of both?
Again, I just cannot figure why we still persist with nuclear, oil, coal, with all the attendant problems (pollution, wars over oil, etc), when we could cover a small proportiion of the deserts of the world with solar cells, and the roofs of our buildings, and the coasts with huge offsiore wind farms (British Wind Enrgy Association page) & tidal turbines, and have all the power we need?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
Here in Holland, we develop and produce quite a bit of hightech aerospace equipment. (Think of Stork, former Fokker, think of Estec, a Holland based ESA tech facility) Although, this usually ends up in some other country's high profile project. So it is good to see the Dutch own engineering get some appreciation once in a while. Even if we didn't develop all of the parts ourselves this time.
Firstly as others have pointed out AUstralia is about as big as the US. But additionally since this road race is not really a race but a rally no cars can break any road rules so no speeding where speedlimits exist and there is other traffic besides the contestants.
I can see it now:
The dutch car stuck behind some slow family on a vacation in a caravan taking up the middle of the road.
Definitely a frying Dutchman!!!!
See my journal, I write things there
Darwin to Adelaide is 3000km or roughly 1875 miles. That's a little more than the distance from Detroit to Florida.
This is why so many people here think "Ignorant American" is a tautology. I've got five bucks that says you've mistaken Australia for Austria.
australia is at a guess a third the size of here.
I just love the sense of geography you have in the USA!
It's like every time a discussion of how behind the USA is with broadband or mobile phone technology, a load of you pipe up with "but the USA is so big! That's why we're behind!"
Get yourself a globe (not a flat map - they distort the sizes of countries.) Cut out a shape approximately the same size as the USA, then position it over other places in the world. You will find that the USA isn't as big as you thought it was.
Perhaps for the UK a car running on rainwater would be a better idea?
I wish you luck with your victory in Australia.
the report (in Dutch) says: "gemiddelde snelheid van 97.02 km/h" and also "de gehele dag gemiddeld zo'n 110 km/h gereden, de snelheidslimiet in South Australia.". In English: "average speed of 97.02 km/h" (60.29 mph) and "the whole day an average of 110 km/h, the speed limit in South Australia". The race takes place on public roads, remember?
my other sig is a 500 page novel
Let's enter the numbers
USA: 9,629,091 sq km (ranked 3rd largest after russia and canada)
Australia: 7,686,850 sq km (ranked 6th largest after china and brazil)
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
This edition is for us morning people. :)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
No good, it's hardly rained here (London) for months now.
HH
...they have less than a third of the prison population that the US has...
According to web sites such as
this and this, the prison population in Australia was approximately two orders of magnitude less than that in the US. The total population is also an order of magnitude less.
Oh wait, it was under my nutsack
Actually, they're ALL prisoners. We transported them there in the 19th century and they bred ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Curse those wily Dutchmen and their Nutricia Chocomel-flavored Tang!
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Not really, 30 teams total, from 12 countries.
Here's a list
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
Really? So a team member could drive in front of me with this really big car and I could just drive in his lee? Problem solved, no solar necessary =)
;-)
Or better yet, mount some really big ass halogen lamps on the car in front of you and point them to the solar cells of my vehicle
But, Alaska is part of the USA. On the other hand, is Russian Siberia part of Europe?
Wait. tell me, really, what gave you the impression that the US is three times the size of Australia? Was it a wild guess based on absolutely nothing but your own presumptions on the size of the US? did you see that the US gets stretched out of proportion on a mercator projection but not realise a sphere can't lay flat on paper and mistake it as a true representation of proportional reality? Did you (heaven forbid) LEARN in school that the US is a lot larger than it is?
I'm intrigued, as I come across dozens of USA residents who are shocked that a country like Australia could be nearly the same size.
But then so are the Yanks - the Brits had a habit of making convicts out of anyone who showed initiative and sending them to the colonies. Australia was founded as a penal colony because they lost the US and needed a new place to send the convicts. Sad that they sent the ones with all the cricket talent ;)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
Just wait till the Dutch team arrives at the Annual Windmill-powered-car Challenge next year!
Winner's site (Dutch): www.nuonsolarteam.nl
are available here, in PDF format unfortunately. Rounding out the top five behind the Dutch are Aurora Vehicle Assn, MIT Solar Electric Team, Queens University, and FH Bochum/SBU.
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
I work about 50m away from the finish line and I think it was nice and sunny today. Well, it was when I looked out the window in the morning. I should have gone down to the tents in Victoria Square at lunch to have a look. I gather they'll still be going for a few days yet so I'll make a point to go have a look tomorrow.
I doubt anyone thinks that solar power will ever be viable in the UK.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
is Russian Siberia part of Europe?
"new" Europe or "old" Europe?
- nic
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
Where do you get the idea that there is a problem in the cities? Mobile works in the big cities no matter which standard you use. Sure it took slightly longer to get there, but there is enough population density that all standards have representation. There are exceptions, but the areas where you can't get service on one system the others don't have service (or very weak service). Seems a lot of people don't like cell towers and try to prevent them. Not a problem from diversity of standards.
In the vast countryside it is different. There multipul standards hurt. There isn't enough money in a lot of areas to make ANY tower profitable, except if you can get the bragging rights that you ahve service everywhere. When the entire population served by a cell is 30 people how do you pay for a tower? Here a universial standard would help because everyone could agree on roaming, and coordinate towers so there is always exactly one in range (except for the moment where you switch cells)
You mean this: American Solar Challenge.
Two of the teams in WSC were competitors in ASC!
Please see this:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=joke
Because US is as big as Australia (as pointed out by others), one starts wondering why it took the florida team 50 hours to get to Mexico? maybe the 55mph speedlimit?
These things will be the FIRST use of "space elevator" technology, mark my words. No moving parts (that "elevator" cab will prove to be a knotty technical nightmare when it comes to actually getting the sonofabitch to work in the real world, and designs that mererely suspend things from the end of the tether will come first) makes for a much simpler deal all the way around.
When it's a done deal, tell 'em you heard it here first, way back in '03.
Is it fascism yet?
There are fans that attach on the top of your car window and are solar powered. You barely crack the window and away you go. Not exactly what you were talking about, but a step in the right direction.
...and I only have to recharge the "battery" every 700 miles or so.
My propulsion system stores solar energy in the form of soybeans, from which oil is extracted, and converted to biodiesel. I pump it into my car (thus recharging my "battery") and drive off. Ok, it's not strictly solar power, but it's a pretty efficient use of surplus soy oil, of which the US has a fair amount. And my car drives fine even with cloudy skies...
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
It is still very sunny. "under clowd in the US/UK" so when they can do it in *insert cloudy US location here, maybe maine or somewhere i duno* that will be impressive.
From this, the casual Slashdot reader can immediately conclude two points, 1) The Dutch are not cheap, nor do they only eat cheese since, if this were true, the profound intelligence required to reach such a conclusion would mean Belgians are not stupid. 2) Given -1-, the writer of this post must obviously be Dutch.
:-P
Klasse lui!
Yes, but is that a Personal Perspective Globe? If it is than I'm sorry, but my home town takes up most of mine, then what little is left is for 2 1/2 hour drive to where I went to college, and another for a 5 hour drive to my father-in-law. Oops I almost forgot the 5 & 7 hours drives to 2 different Aunts.
But other than that much of the rest of the Globle exists only in an abstract sense. I know it exists any things happen out there that effect me, but usually i hardly ever leave my town any so my Personal Sphere would be that. I could care less what is happening on the other side of the state, much less the other side of the globle.
Gosh, that sounds so "American." Our secert mind controlling media masters must be thrilled with me. I have the idealized American view point.
lol! try again.
Australian Literacy : 100%
American Literacy : 97%
source : CIA world factbook.
Oh, then you mean this:
Sunrayce 99
It doesn't say it outright on that page, but that rayce had solid clouds and rain 8 out of 9 days.
So is the space progam, so is all of science.
The Dutch Advantage: bad weather in their homeland.
... nevermind. I either need to up the dosage or quit already.)
If you get more clouds, you have to learn to be more efficient.
The Aussies had the disadvantage that they've got 358 sunny days each year, so they didn't bother with efficiency.
For evolutionary progress, there must be oppositional conditions. It's just another example of the theory of Darwin.
(Disclaimer: satire. Get it? Darwin? Y'know? Ah
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Being a US citizen, I think I can comment.
Our sense of self-importance is pumped up in lots of subtle ways. The selection of news items for broadcast is one of them. Another is that globes are not often used when teaching geography. More importantly, they are never used on TV.
The projections used often make the US bigger than anything else on the planet. Additional blowups are often used to draw the users attention to whatever is considered important. Obviously, the US is usually the most important.
I've even (once) run across a globe that had the size of the US distorted to be larger. I found that to be really bizzare.
PS: I don't think this is a conspiracy. Just the way things tend to work out in US culture.
plus-good, double-plus-good
Please see this:o ke
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=j
Please see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The US is behind in broadband/mobile phone tech because of how much we are spread out.
In Europe, most towns/cities are quite old and the population density is much higher on average. This gives your companies a better chance at turning a huge profit from upgrading their systems. Plus you have to factor in who the large players are in the mobile techonology market: nokia, motorola... It should be quite obvious why Northern Europe is leading the mobile tech craze.
My town in Ohio is about 24,000 people and is flanked by corn and soybean fields. Yes, lots of people have cell phones, but the reception is iffy sometimes because of the lack of towers. Cable came to our area about 3 years ago, and dsl is still unavailable. Companies are unwilling to invest the millions of dollars in upgrades if they cannot recover the costs.
In terms of size, the US is still in the top 5 in land mass I believe. But I do admit that believeing the US is 3x larger than Australia is being naive.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Did you I have met some Americans who didnt believe me when I told them the US used to get convicts. They literally could not accept it.
The Brits are just annoyed. They thought they were send the worst people to the worst place. Looking at it now, they realise they sent them to the best place - only to come back and kick their arse at everything.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
Leave it to the Dutch to win this, when they have a large number of cities with carfree cores (close to 50!). They walk and bike much more than citizens of North American and are at the top compared to their European counterparts. http://www.carfree.com/carfree_places.html
"Same goes for other top cars"
In some bizarro world definition of 'top'.
Let's face it North American University teams don't win the World Solar Challenge, and part of the reason for that is that it is not their main objective (to be charitable).
Especially at cricket.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Diesel fuel is just thicker gasoline really (more carbon atoms). It's refined from the same crude oil. I think it's actually easier to refine than gasoline and since it's more dense, it's more efficient to transport.
So unless the whole petroleum industry is running itself on hydropower or wind or something, if diesel fuel takes more energy to create than it delivers, we'd be in a net energy deficit regarding petroleum based power. I find it difficult to believe that is true. I also find it hard to believe that diesel fuel (and by inference, fuel oil, which is the same thing) would be so cheap to buy and widely used if they were sucking up all that energy.
You sure you didn't make a typo?
Fundamentalism is a crime against humanity
According to the article the car "uses advanced space technology, provided to the team via ESA's European Space Agency) Technology Transfer Programme" and the "ESA not only provided them with engineering support via its Technology Transfer Programme but also with general support via the Education Office, previously headed by former ESA astronaut Wubbo Ockels, who is also adviser to the team."
The article also points out that the "Nuna II also carries Maximum Power Point Trackers... many satellites carry these devices, for instance ESA's Rosetta mission to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, due for launch in February 2004."
So while everyone else was racing cars built by students with relatively small budgets, the Dutch were racing the latest and greatest technology that the space industry can provide. So which is it, a competition between colleges, or various countries flexing their technological might? US went with the former, obviously the Dutch chose the latter.
Why does this sound a lot like the 1st grader who turns in a working nuclear reactor as a science fair project? Hmm...
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
For example, if the 5 million dollar car finishes only 5% quicker than the half million dollar car than I think the half million dollar car should be declared the winner. Cost won't include design, only the price of the physical materials used to build the car.
Why? Because it's more useful. If this is ever going to become a pratical solution for the public (and that's the point, right? To prove solar power is practical?) than they're going to have to stop building 5 million dollar vehicles that get 60mph and start creating $100,000 vehicles that get 50mph. Sure it's slower, but at least the price is dropping, and technology that's $100,000 now might be $30,000 in 10 years.
Otherwise in 5 years they'll be making 15 million dollar cars that get 90mph and all they'll prove is how expensive solar power is.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone