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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.
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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."
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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!"
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.
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?
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
...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.
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.
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.
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!
lol! try again.
Australian Literacy : 100%
American Literacy : 97%
source : CIA world factbook.