Solar Powered Car Attempts to Break Record

Snowdon writes "Jaycar Sunswift III today started on its 4000km journey across the Australian outback, in an attempt to beat the 8.5 day record from Perth to Sydney. The team expects to complete the journey in 6 days, depending on the weather. It is a seriously innovative machine, with the aerodynamic design iteratively optimised on 80 CS lab computers over three months, custom-built carbon-fibre wheels, chassis, suspension and steering components, and custom-built power electronics and telemetry/control systems (components of which presently use Linux, but will soon run Iguana/Wombat). It is the result of several years' work by both undergraduate and postgraduate students at UNSW. Keep track of the team's progress by visiting www.sunswift.com."

Comments

Clear sky all the way across!

[miratrix]

The article title had me excited for a second - as a (ex-)member of the University of Waterloo's Midnight Sun Solar Race Car Team that broke the world record for the longest distance traveled on a solar car, I thought they were trying to erase us from the record books. I guess the distance record will be safe for next little while longer. :)

I wish you guys the best in your journey ahead! UNSW, for those that don't know, has one of the most advanced photovoltaic research labs in the world and probably still holds all the records for getting the highest efficiency out of Si-cells.

The course is not symetrical

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem with this course is that its one-way, not symetrical. If a team wants to cheat, what they do is calculate the averate prevailing winds, and form their vehicles shape to get a boost from this. Not to imply this team is doing that, but because its possible and difficult to detect, a more symetrical course would be desirable.

Pffft Yeah Right

[Frogbert]

Once again we are plagued with stories originating from this so called "Western Australia". As an Australian I am probably most aware of the myth of Western Australia, for those of you not in the know I'll lay it out for you. Have you ever been to Western Australia? No you haven't, have you ever met anyone who is from Western Australia? No, I didn't think so. Seriously ask around your office, no one has been there. Sure you hear about it in the news (such as the article) but finding good hard evidence of its existence just isn't possible. Why you ask? Because Western Australia doesn't exist. Think about it. The supposed state is massive, too large to practically be governed by one single state government. Furthermore it is conveniently placed about as far away as possible from any other people, people who could verify its existence. As far as I can tell the whole myth of WA started as an inside joke between cartographers. Soon many other professionals, publishers, politicians, journalists, photographers etc. took notice and they all created their own versions of the joke. Together they created a vast tapestry of "evidence" of its existence and culture. Over the years this myth grew and the various versions merged together. Today many people just assume the state exists. A good repository of false evidence can be found here. Unfortunately some people are so convinced of this preposterous notion they relentlessly revert my many edits to the site. Think about it people! A black swan? That doesn't make any sense at all, swans are white not black. OPEN YOUR EYES SHEEPLE!!

Iteratively optimised on?

[AHuxley]

80 Australian CS lab computers - What's that in US computers?

What about the solar cells?

[Gertlex]

As a member of a college-level solar car team, I'm curious as to what the solar cells that it uses are. It's nothing special that just about everything on the car is custom built; that's a norm for SC teams. There are two divisions in the World Solar Challenge. One division, the more publicized, is restricted to "publicly available" (though not necessarily cheap) solar cells. There are various other limitations in this category as well. The other, which I know even less about, but allows any solar cells to be used.

A common reference that my team gives the public is that our car runs on the power of a hair dryer. Does this car attain more or less power.

I'd guess this project doesn't have any restrictions. I just wonder, that's all.

Re:What about the solar cells?

[snowdon]

There are 1034 cut down Sunpower A300 cells in the array. (They're cut to take off the corners and allow us to get 5% more active area into our 12m^2 - we ended up with 11.5m^2 active area). They're encapsulated by Gochermann Solar Techonology in Germany (for reference: I can't speak highly enough of these things. Having built several of our arrays, including the vacuum-formed curved panels for Sunswift 2, I can assure everyone that this is easily the best experience I've ever had with solar cells. Everything just works the way its supposed to).

Re:good luck!

[Ronin441]

Why bring spares, just use a tire that doesn't get flats. Because t[iy]res that go flat are more efficient. The majority of solar car teams spurn even regular tyres as too inefficient, and run special solar car racing tyres. These are thin, because less rubber means less to deform as the rubber meets the road, and deformation absorbs energy. They are often low in carbon black, which reduces their life but again decreases the amount of energy absorbed by deformation. And we pump them up really really hard.

In 2003, Aurora and MIT Tesseract were less than a minute apart for much of the race, until Tesseract hit an amber traffic light in Port Augusta, slammed on the brakes, and popped two tyres. (Aurora had studied rolling resistance versus tyre pressure, and discovered that the last bit of extra inflation caused almost no change in rolling resistance, and thus ran their tyres at a saner pressure.) Blown tyres are quite common, which considering that these are mostly three wheeled vehicles, and that the top cars often go in excess of 100km/h, is terrifying.