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World Solar Challenge Started in Australian Desert
photonic writes "The World Solar Challenge has just finished the first racing day. It is a 3000 kilometer race from Darwin to Adelaide for cars that are powered by solar energy only. The results from this day have not yet been published, but intermediate results suggest that the Dutch Nuon Solar Team is again on the lead. This team from Delft University of Technology has a reputation to uphold since they also won the previous two races in 2001 and 2003, the last one in a record breaking 97 km/h average.
The Tesseract team from MIT was less fortunate: during the qualification they got off track and rolled over. After some fixing up they still managed to qualify into 7th place on battery power, but with substantial damage to the solar panel their challenge will be finishing rather than winning."
What does "for cars that are powered by solar energy only" mean. Do the batteries need to be empty at the start of the trip? Or as full as they were at the start when the cars reach the finish?
Otherwise I wouldn't count it as "solar energy only", even though they might have charged the accumulators beforehand through the solar panels.
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> during the qualification they got off track and rolled over.
Upside down country did it, the solar car was merely trying to right itself.
Another oddity, that khaki colour car there looks like a 4 door GTO 'coupe'
Strange
From the Dutch Nuna website:
The Nuna 3 won day 1, finishing half an hour before the Michigan team (which got a flat tire halfway).
3000 kilometers = 12648.3018 btus per pound force
97 km/h = 8.03640075 furlongs per minute
It takes a lot of work to build one of these cars. Plus, using them is a lot of work. Think of it this way: you're out in blazing sunlight, no fans or ac (would be using too much extra power, which you can't afford). You start as soon as your car will start (a few minutes after the crack of dawn) and keep going until your car's battery runs down. You don't stop at a hotel because, most probably, there isn't one where you stop. These guys are really building the future. And I respect that.
On another note, does anyone know of a similar competition using hydrogen feul?
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
Of course it does - it's a Holden Commodore, an Australian icon (not really a fan myself, they're pretty poo cars). The 2-door coupe based off the Commodore is the Monaro, which is exported to the US as the GTO Coupe.
this type of contest will lead to advantageous developments in both solar energy generation and electrical power usage. Both of these can lead to a greener world. Sounds coy, but if everyone was contributing to the power grid instead of only sucking from it, the reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy would decrease. This is better for everyone (I'm NOT anti-nuclear or a global warming nutjob) and the planet as well.
As stupid as it sounds, I think that trying to use cleaner energy will lead us to better use of just about everything. If power were essentially free for all to use, there would be a massive shift of cultural and business boundaries. Anyone can donate farm equipment to poor 3rd world countries, but continuous powering of that equipment is the down side. If you teach them to fish with a huge fishing vessel, you still have to show them how to power it.
I'm not saying that power/energy generation and usage is the crux of the world's problems, but when you look at the list of problems, pick the one that gives you the biggest bang for buck when it is fixed, engergy generation/usage is close or at the top of that list.
So, in respect of the possible outcomes of such racing events, I have high hopes that it will lead the world to better ways of doing things. Hybrid cars are a good start, but the technology is still lagging behind where we really need it to be. Approximately 10-25% of US household budgets will be spent on fuels and energy this winter because of the recent hurricanes, damage, and of course price gouging. If we all had the capability of generating at least some of our own energy, it would be competition to other fuel/energy sources... which hopefully would drop the price as well as reliance on oil companies. This can't be anything other than good.
Perhaps windmills on the roofs are not a safe/good idea, but we need something.
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The success of the Dutch team has (finally) caused others to take up the challenge. One is another from the Netherlands, the http://www.solarteamtwente.nl/nieuws.php Solutra team (http://www.utwente.nl/ University of Twente). Compared to the Delftian guys, these people are novices, but it's nice to see some real rivalry and competition being initiated. I saw them practice, just a few days before the went to Australia, and asked if they has practiced changing tires (which I think is the important thing in winning the challenge). The answer: no, not yet, do you think that's important?
Remember that it really is a challenge, since temperatures inside the car can get more than 50 degrees Celsius.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
sooner or later, well, wanna have a fight ? Lets googlefight and settle this once and for all
Google Fight - Solar vs Nuclear power!
Ohh hell, whatever... you guys can have this one but we'll be back.
I remember reading about Australia's solar-powered car race back in the 80's in the Smithsonian. Naive child that I was, then, I thought, "Wow! If they're doing that already, it can't be five years until we see them on the streets in the US!"
Now, every time I bring this up, I hear "Aw, you can't drive from 'Frisco to Vegas in a single day in a solar-powered car!", so I'll cut out the middle man: You can keep your gas-guzzler for cross-country runs, industrial/commercial use, and off-road exploring. I'm talking about city-use only with these. The average urban dweller just needs to get around town, for driving times of less than 40 minutes each, on roads with lots of stop-and-go driving and speed limits 45 MPH or less - not counting the freeway (In places like LA, the freeways work out exactly the same, anyway, thanks to traffic!). To and from work, the store, appointments, etc. A hybrid electric-solar urban vehicle could be light (about half the raw materials we currently use), two-passenger (who needs the extra seats when most folks wouldn't car-pool if there were a gun to their heads?), and would only need to store a maximum of three or four hours charge (when was the last time you Big City types had a commute longer than that?). The expensive part comes in upgrading all the parking spaces - installing an outlet in each one. The car could locate the sensor whenever it's parked and automatically plug itself in, whenever it detects that it's low on juice. The cost is offset by the parking meters - which we already have all over the place downtown, anyway.
The heck with the future - we should have started doing this ten years ago! Don't give me the usual Slashdot chant: "Can't happen! Won't work! Impossible!" Apply the freakin' science already! Instead of gas running you several hundred dollars a week, you could pay half that in taxes to fund this project.
The biggest rules limiting design are the following: Car size: 1.8x5m, 2m high. The size limit is for obvious reasons- without it, they cars would get huge. driver position: eye height 0.7m, head behind and above knees, ground visibility 8m ahead. Purely safety- the driver can't see what's going on if he's 2" off the pavement, and a headfirst seating position is incredibly dangerous in any crash. Other than that, all of the rules just say that your car has to be electrically and mechanically safe, with battery monitoring and a full roll cage. The officials encourage innovation, as long as the end result is still a safe car. As far as your question about ride height, it is mostly determined by the size of the tires and the eye height requirement. Yes, lower is better, but get too low and your wheels are coming through your array and your driver's cockpit stick out 2 feet! If you look at the top 5 cars in the field, they are engineering marvels, both in aerodynamics and weight reduction. Believe me, nothing goes on these cars without a very good reason.