University of Michigan Solar Car Wins Fifth Straight National Title 25
An anonymous reader writes For the fifth consecutive year, the solar car team from the University of Michigan has won the American Solar Car Challenge. The event is an eight-day, 1,700-mile race with a total of 23 participating teams. The Umich victory comes in spite of a 20-30 minute delay when they had problems with the motor at the very beginning of the race. "They made the time up when team strategists decided to push the car to the speed limit while the sun was shining bright, rather than hold back to conserve energy." Footage of the race and daily updates on the car's performance are available from the team's website, as are the specs of the car itself. Notably, the current iteration of the car weighs only 320 pounds, a full 200 pounds lighter than the previous version.
Michigan (Score:1)
That's close to Detroit, right?
Re: (Score:1)
Tuesday night, Detroit city council members were seen on the streets with suitcases full of deeds, desperately trying to sell the city piecemeal to Canadian tourists.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone remember that this was the humorous subplot of the otherwise godawful Robocop 2? The city of Detroit had went bankrupt and the mayor was holding a pathetic telethon to try to raise money to save the city from being bought outright by OCP. Today's joke becomes tomorrow's reality, I guess.
Re: (Score:2)
Detroit doesn't like change. But, then again, neither do most of its customers.
Perfectly fair (Score:3)
'Major sponsors include Ford, General Motors, IMRA, Michigan Engineering, NYK, Qatar Airways and Siemens PLM Software.'
Why is that unfair? Other teams are permitted to get sponsors. It's their problem if they can't recruit good sponsors. Plus most of those companies hire Michigan engineering graduates so why wouldn't they sponsor the students they are likely to hire?
Re: (Score:2)
'Major sponsors include Ford, General Motors, IMRA, Michigan Engineering, NYK, Qatar Airways and Siemens PLM Software.'
Why is that unfair? Other teams are permitted to get sponsors. It's their problem if they can't recruit good sponsors. Plus most of those companies hire Michigan engineering graduates so why wouldn't they sponsor the students they are likely to hire?
Sure, I think they should be able to get as much money as they want from sponsors. However, the article made it sound like they were getting engineering help from their sponsors. This is supposed to be a student competition, not a professional contest. In this case, the team that won didn't even build their car, they just drove a car built by previous students and sponsors. I guess they drove it competently, but in an engineering competition I would like to see more engineering on the part of the partic
Pushed the Car during Max Sunlight (Score:2)
Been there.. Seen that - in 1990 (Score:1)
Only 320 pounds? That's a pretty dramatic improvement, but then the UMich solar car team has always had some pretty deep-pocket backers. It is a shame that most of the teams have gone to the three-wheel trike and pancake design - basically copying the Honda and Swiss teams from the 1990 World Solar Challenge. The old "tadpole truck" design UMich used to have was pretty impressive.
How about... (Score:2)
How about this? Add a rule that they have to have, say, 50 cubic feet of storage inside the car (in addition to the driver).
Re:How about... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then they would all look alike but with 50 cubic feet of storage.
That is the problem with any engineering challenge where the conditions of a test are repeated over and over. Everyone will naturally move towards the same design as, without a major technological break through, that design is the most efficient concept.
It is the major reason I hate the direction motorcycle racing is going. By bringing in more rules about what is and isn't allowed they are reducing the possible solutions.
Re: (Score:2)
What type of motorcycle racing? Can you elaborate? (I don’t know much about it but I’ve been getting curious. Is it like the increasingly arcane F1 restrictions expressly designed to keep speeds down on tracks designed for slower cars?)
F1 (Score:2)
The latest high-end sports cars use exactly this sort of hybrid setup, so it is completely logical that the traditional racetrack-consumer synergy be continued with this change.
In this sense, F1 is adapting and remaining meaningful (to high end cars), where the electric plywood-on-wheels cars are incr
Re: (Score:2)
MotoGP and World SuperBike. The rules aren't really designed to slow the bikes down. It was supposedly to keep the costs down but that hasn't happened. It has had the effect of pushing a lot of the development into materials.
Recent motogp changes that I don't like include:
Control tyres - you used to have michelin, dunlop and bridgestone developing tyres to suit the characterestics of a particular bike. Because the tyres had different wear characteristics you saw different tyres perform better on differe
Designs converge on optimums (Score:2)
As cool as these cars are, they are starting to all look alike.
Physics is a harsh mistress. They tend to look a lot alike because physics combined with the rules of the contest will generally force the designs towards an optimum. In other words they are going to tend to converge on the same general design over time.
Then change the design yearly (Score:3)
These solar cars have been "a piece of wood with 4 tiny wheels" for a decade or more.
Have them tow a trailer one year, or hill climb, or drive through mud (run the race through the south). Speaking of hill climb -- have a Pike's Peak race.
Re: (Score:2)
They have been the same physical layout but their aerodynamic profile isn't what this competition is designed to challenge. What they want to challenge is the electrical system. How much power can your cells generate, how efficiently can you transfer that power to your motor, how versatile is the motor and how well can you store that power for when the sun isn't as bright.
These aspects have continued to develop every year.
Go Blue! (Score:1)
As a current EE major a Michigan, Go Blue!