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Solar-Powered Cars Race fron Austin to Calgary

Posted by timothy on from the other-way-would-seem-more-sensible dept.

dblizzard writes "The North American Solar Challenge race is about to start. Travelling at speeds of up to 130km/hr (80mph), these teams will race from Austin Texas to Calgary Alberta all with no non-reusable energy. Here's the race link, and here's some really cool photos of the Queens' University car."

4 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Uhm by Andrew+Tanenbaum · · Score: 5, Informative

    Solar isn't reusable. There's just a lot of it.

  2. Re:Irony by gonk · · Score: 3, Informative

    A little FYI. Austin Energy leads the nation in green power. From www.austinenergy.com:

    "GreenChoice is the most successful utility-sponsored green power program in the nation with 383 million kWh in subscriptions at the end of 2004."

    robert
    (yes, I'm a GreenChoice household)

  3. Re:Speeds up 80 clicks? by eta526 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, they have to stay within the speed limit. That's the only reason they don't go faster. UMR won last time. I'm hoping they can take it again. http://news.umr.edu/news/2005/solarprkit05.html

  4. Re:speed limits, safety? by ferds32 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm also curious how they plan to keep solar cars from mixing with general traffic; there has been at least one fatal accident involving a solar car (which came apart like paper mache) a few months ago when a solar vehicle was being tested.

    The rules of this race and the World Solar Challenge are similar. (I believe this is deliberate, so a car built for one race can race in the other.) The cars are required to have escort vehicles at all times in the World Solar Challenge. I should imagine the American race would be the same.

    Honestly, what was wrong with an enduro race on a closed race circuit? At least then it would be more controllable, and emergency/rescue crews would be barely a minute or two from any participant. There are numerous reasons we do our racing OFF public roads...

    Racing on the roads gives vastly more public exposure to the technology. The public, at least in outback Australia and Japan, are facinated by the cars. Taking a few hybrids along means people also see the practical application of some of the technology and can even take a hybrid for a drive! None of that would happen on a closed circuit. There are circuit races as well, such as the Dream Cup, but they serve a quite different type of racing.

    --
    Tom Rowlands
    (Sorry, I can't sign this.)