American Solar Challenge Racers Head For Canada 144
coondoggie writes "Solar race cars this week began their nine-day,
2,400 mile chase from Dallas to Calgary, Alberta using only the sun for fuel. The 24 teams in the American Solar Challenge race are mainly US college teams including entries from MIT, Ohio State and Northwestern. The University of Michigan's Continuum car is the defending champ, having won the Challenge in Australia last year. The University of Michigan has won four out of the eight North American Solar Challenges it has entered with its team of more than 100 engineering students, who have vowed to defend their title this year."
Re:Applause Well Deserved, but Starkly Absent (Score:5, Interesting)
On another note, I have an idea as to why electric cars (even ridiculously fast ones like the tesla) don't get the "hotness" factor that other race cars get - they don't make loud noise. I think the visceral reaction to a loud muffler is what draws the "speed" emotion from folks. (Incidentally it also explains why every honda civic down the block has a muffler the size of a cantelope).
hey, my donated latches are on the OSU car! :) (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, it was quite a long time ago, but latches I sell, normally used on carbon fiber race hoods I manufacture were donated to the OSU team to latch the top and bottom halves of the car together.
If you are curious, it's these:
http://deftracing.com/aerocatch_hood_pins/index.htm [deftracing.com]
I just got a msg on the 26th that they were heading for their first race, but forgot to follow up on it... I see it's on it's way... but they may have had battery problems :(
here's the OSU blog with up to date info:
http://oregonstate.edu/groups/solar/ [oregonstate.edu]
Re:Michigan didn't win the 2007 World Solar Challe (Score:5, Interesting)
When I'm not at home in Chicago, I'm at my place in Rolla, MO, where I've seen the talented youngsters from Missouri U of Sci & Tech working on their solar vehicle. It's been nearly a decade since I first saw their sun car, and maybe, finally, this country of 300 million hunks of iron junk on wheels is ready to think about other ways of getting to Wal-mart to do their shopping besides relying on fossil fuels.
What do you think, has $4.59/gal gasoline changed any minds yet? My family has downsized to a '95 Mazda that spends most of the time in the garage, but then we live in downtown Chicago where you can walk a few blocks from any point in town and pick up a bus or train in about 5 minutes. Or, and this is what we've chosen, we can hop on our bikes and give the big fungoo to the oil companies (at least when it comes to transportation). Living just blocks from campus or working from home makes it a lot easier, but I'm thinking there are other people making similar decisions to ours. One thing I've learned is that I'm not all that exceptional, so if I can get by without visiting a gas pump every week there are other people doing the same.
Getting back to the solar car race, I just hope the media makes the story more than just an end-of-the-newscast cute item. We need to learn there's other ways to do things, and it feels so good when I cruise by the gas stations on my bike. I like to see the sad faces of the doofuses in their '07 Escalades or Tundras or whatever they're calling those stupid locomotives-on-rubber these days, as they watch the numbers fly by on the gas pumps. Fuck 'em for being stupid, I say. Plus, it makes them a little less cocky and agressive when it comes to sharing the street with my infinite-miles-per-gallon velocipede. Maybe at some point I'll start to have a little human sympathy and understanding for them. But not yet, not yet.
wind (Score:3, Interesting)
That would actually be interesting if they ever encountered tail winds and could adjust the angle of one of the panels to act as a sail, or even the canopy. Would be a nice "sleeper" bit of tech to surprise the opposition.
Re:Michigan didn't win the 2007 World Solar Challe (Score:5, Interesting)
Michigan was poised to win the 2007 World Solar Challenge until they crashed into their lead support vehicle. Their lead had to break hard after being cut off by STANFORD's support vehicle, which was panicking after they lost their solar car in the heavy Darwin (Australia) traffic. Next time your team enters an international event, please practice driving your race caravan in traffic.
Congratulations on winning the 2005 stock race on a car largely based on Michigan's (embarrassing) 2003 car- one of your lead mechanical designers was a UM veteran.
Sorry about the flame- I am an ex-UM member and am still a little bitter.
an interesting point of the rules... (Score:3, Interesting)
i'm find it fascinating that the rules state that the cars are only allowed to run on global thermal energy - which includes wind, EXCEPT for any power stored in the batteries at the beginning of day one.
if i read this correctly, the team with the most efficient batteries (and/or greatest battery capacity) has a tremendous advantage.
an even more interesting race would start with all cars at a zero-charge, i think.
See it as you wish. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry about the flame- I am an ex-UM member and am still a little bitter.
I can see that.
Solar car is about building experience and becoming better at what you do. You can't fault a guy for learning from his mistakes and doing things better the second time around. What is an education for?
UM has lost focus of the spirit of the event. This is a race, but it's not a race to a finish line. It's a race to learn as much as you can in the limited time you have as an undergraduate in a club activity.
Michigan wants so badly to win that they realize needlessly risky designs to pursue fleetingly small perceived advantages. Gaming the race framework and then blaming the outcome of borderline engineering on others is bad form and is representative of the poor sportsmanship that has given the team such a bad reputation in the solar car racing community.
Now, that is not to say that everyone on the UM team is a bad person. There are many fine engineers and upstanding people on the UM team, but their good work, high spirits, passion for the sport, and good conduct are easily eclipsed by the few members of the UM team that don't hold those values as highly.
I would like to point out that the race officials concluded that Stanford had no culpability in Michigan's accident. Observers from both teams provided the details to reach that final decision.
Maybe next time UM shouldn't use brakes designed for a bicycle on a solar car.
Re:See it as you wish. (Score:3, Interesting)
U of M had by far the most innovative car in WSC. Yes, they spent the $$ to get a good array, but only 1/4 as much as the winners from the Netherlands. The UM solar concentrator system was, IMO the biggest new thing to solar car racing since MIT's '95 "short car" aero design. And I'm not counting industry improvements like solar cells or batteries.
If you want to harp on teams that spend money and don't improve much, just look at the top 5 teams in that race- similar cars with fancy arrays.
This, for those of you that care (probably no one) was a system of 12 mirrors mounted in the rear of the car that focused the sunlight about 20x on small, ~1cm wide strips of ultra-efficient concentrator cells. Everything in that design had to be designed and built by the team, from the system to rotate the mirrors to track the sun within 2 degrees, to re-engineering the mounting and encapsulation of the specialized solar cells.
All told, they were able to get several hundred watts out of about 0.1 m^2 of solar cells, something unheard of on a MOVING vehicle, let alone a system that weighed under 50lbs and was packaged within a very aerodynamic shape. They even developed a new method of body construction in order to shape an upper surface that had a giant hole in the middle, yet was still stiff enough to survive the road. If UM had won, it may have even become the standard way for future solar cars to build their arrays.
Yes, the design was risky, but the advantage was huge, a 20% gain in power, and recall that 1 other team tried concentrating sunlight (not very successfully) and it was approved by the WSC rules committee a year in advance.