Lithium ion technology is something that is still fairly new to consumer products, but it has been around in the "experimental implementation" field for a long while.
the UMR Solar Miner III seen here can do close to 600 miles on a 68Kg LI+ battery pack, whereas a traditional lead-acid battery pack that would give us the same milage would be more than twice the weight
solar car design and raycing is (for us uni and high-school persons)is primarily an endevor of engineering. you can't always splurge on the 34% efficient space-grade cells. sometimes you have to determine that you don't have the money, and you'd rather have a decent car overall than a boffo solar array on a wooden crate. if an engineer works hard enough at it, and has the right insight at the right time, many good things can happen...independent of the almighty buck. at UMR we have pretty good funding (how much is for me to know, not you all;) ), but when we design a car, we know that there are teams out there that have 3 times the funding that we do. So, rather than sacrifice our budget for the nifty "one-item" improvements, we spread costs out to balance improvements. I would say that batteries, solar cells, and the motor are the three big ticket items in a solar car. sacrificing the quality of the motor and battieries that you can purchase for a really high efficiency solar array is bad engineering. in this way, solar raycing is kind of like taoism, everything must be in balance
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Lithium ion technology is something that is still fairly new to consumer products, but it has been around in the "experimental implementation" field for a long while.
the UMR Solar Miner III seen here can do close to 600 miles on a 68Kg LI+ battery pack, whereas a traditional lead-acid battery pack that would give us the same milage would be more than twice the weight
first, a shameful, kowtowing plug: http://solar42.umr.edu
;) ), but when we design a car, we know that there are teams out there that have 3 times the funding that we do. So, rather than sacrifice our budget for the nifty "one-item" improvements, we spread costs out to balance improvements. I would say that batteries, solar cells, and the motor are the three big ticket items in a solar car. sacrificing the quality of the motor and battieries that you can purchase for a really high efficiency solar array is bad engineering. in this way, solar raycing is kind of like taoism, everything must be in balance
solar car design and raycing is (for us uni and high-school persons)is primarily an endevor of engineering. you can't always splurge on the 34% efficient space-grade cells. sometimes you have to determine that you don't have the money, and you'd rather have a decent car overall than a boffo solar array on a wooden crate. if an engineer works hard enough at it, and has the right insight at the right time, many good things can happen...independent of the almighty buck. at UMR we have pretty good funding (how much is for me to know, not you all