American Solar Challenge Racers Head For Canada

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."

photos of prep day in Plano, Texas

Here are some photos I shot of the teams preparing their cars the day before the rally started in Plano, Texas.

North American Solar Challenge 2008 prep day photos [flickr.com]

Michigan didn't win the 2007 World Solar Challenge

Michigan did not win the 2007 World Solar Challenge. Team Nuon did so with their Nuna4.

Michigan won the 2005 American Solar Challenge race by about ten minutes over Minnesota.

My team [stanford.edu] won the 2005 American Solar Challenge for the stock class, edging out Berkeley by 26 minutes.

Re:Michigan didn't win the 2007 World Solar Challe

I wouldn't get all huffy about it, Michigan won't win anyway, Appalachian State has an entry...

Re:Michigan didn't win the 2007 World Solar Challe

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.

Re:Michigan didn't win the 2007 World Solar Challe

Ugh...out of the 3 submissions regarding the NASC, the least-accurate and least-timely one is the one that gets promoted to the front page. Sasha Zbrozek, the team lead for Stanford's next solar car, submitted a much better write-up [slashdot.org] a few days ago when the NASC started.

Re:Michigan didn't win the 2007 World Solar Challe

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.

See it as you wish.

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.

Canada?

They're having a solar race... in Canada?

Why not? The sun's great up here.

Calgary is one of the sunniest cities in North America in terms of amount of sunshine per year. Southern Alberta is, in large part, a semi-arid region with very low humidity, so the Sun really packs a wallop here due to very low atmospheric extinction. At this time of year the days are also longer the further North you go. Those cars will probably make better time once they cross into Canada than they will in most parts of the U.S..

However, Alberta isn't really a solar energy hot-spot. Wind power is where it's at. Alberta produces more wind power than any other province in Canada. Whichever racers have the foresight to pack a sail will probably make the best time on the last leg of their journey.

Re:

They're having a solar race... in Canada?

Between having to stay in igloos, endless darkness and putting on snow chains, it is going to be tough ;)

Re:Canada?

Yeesh. Everyone's racing in the same direction, silly wabbit. Besides, it's summer here now, so there's lots of sunlight to be had.

A local (Winnipeg) community college is participating too, here's their race blog: http://raycer.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com]

Re:

Um, that's why the race is *2400 Miles* long. You don't win due to a random 30 second event. By your logic they should set up a dynamometer and a giant light bulb...

Re:

IANAStatiscian
You could say the race is affected by a number of dice rolls which can either harm or benefit each car. The longer the race, the more rolls and the steeper the bell curve (actually, binomial distribution), thus getting any significant benefit or harm becomes less likely

Re:Canada?

So then the team is the one who is best prepared for these changing conditions. Seems kind of fair to me. Having a longer race will expose the teams to greater variety in conditions, and this can only be a good thing. You're not going to have static, ideal conditions in the real world - and presumably, these cars/this race is being held to promote and advance tech that could make it to the consumers.

World Solar Challenge

In 2001 the Nuna of the Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands, participating for the first time, was the fastest.

In 2003 the Nuna 2, the successor to the winner of 2001 won again, with an average speed of 97 km/h (60 mph).

In 2005 the Nuna team scored a hat-trick with their third victory in a row; their Nuna 3 won with a record average speed of 102.75 km/h (63.85 mph). Aurora finished in second place followed by the University of Michigan in third.

In 2007 the Dutch Nuon Solar team scored their fourth successive victory with Nuna4 in the challenge class averaging 90.07 km/h (55.97 mph) under the new rules, while the Ashiya team with their car Tiga won the race in the adventure class under the old rules with an average speed of 93.53 km/h (58.12 mph).

But it makes sense, with the average Dutch weather our solar tech has to be really good!

Breakdown of time

Time to drive from Dallas to Calgary - 2 days
Time to negotiate border crossing - 7 days

Re:Breakdown of time

Not to mention confiscating your technological gadgets. You thought getting a laptop past the border was hard, let's try an entire vehicle that no-one's seen before that some young punks claim is a "magic car" that runs on sunshine and happiness.

I see...

more than 100 engineering students

One to turn it on, the rest to shine flashlights on it?

Applause Well Deserved, but Starkly Absent

I think this kind of competition is just great, what with the innovation which is always spawned by things of this nature.

However, I can't help but notice that although I feel pride for the competitors and feel happy that progress in this direction is taking place, the public interest seems lacking. And I don't just mean Joe Shmoe is unamused: at the time of this posting the article has been front page slashdot for 5 minutes with 1 comment.

Is it because these vehicles, while being great proofs of concept, do point out the current weakness of real-time solar power? Are the cars just too lightly built and cheesy looking?

Perhaps a way to capture more popular attention (and thus imagination) might be to have a Solar "Charged" race. This would catch more interest I think.

Stipulate that the vehicles must charge their batteries using solar power and utilize only the power they have derived from the sun. This would allow high-performance electric cars to be showcased doing their sports-car killing speed runs whilst whining by like a flying saucer.

If there is one thing the scientists and geeks need to evolve, it's a better sense of PR.

If you need evidence that the nerdy are bad with PR just look at some of the scary, weird names used for our creations:

* Linux - sounds like an evil species of aliens - 'run! the Linux are attacking!'

* The Gimp - do I need to say more?

* Ubuntu - beautiful in translation, terrible as a mnemonic for the target 'lay' audience - 'ooo-but what?'

Re:Applause Well Deserved, but Starkly Absent

You have a great point. 1000's will show up to watch regular cars drive around in a circle. Real innovation somehow doesn't draw such a crowd. I think if we got enough hot chicks in racing T's, set up some bar-be-que and encouraged the liberal administration of fermented beverages they could probably gather an audience.

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).

WMU!

Go Western Michigan! Oh... wait... our car broke already...

Go someone else!

Moose repellant

Moose versus Solar Car would not harm the moose, but it would be unlikely the car would roll again. What sort of technology is being employed for the very serious issue of possible Moose Damage inflicted onto a solar car during a race?

Oklahoma US-75

those truck drivers drive like hell on US-75 so be careful!!! stay in the right-hand lane whenever possible and the truckers will naturally pass in the left lane (the hammer lane)

I live 60 miles from McAlester i may just drive to BigMac just to wave from the side of the road, i wish you all lots of good luck...

hey, my donated latches are on the OSU car! :)

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:Solar power in Canada....

Yeah, there aren't many paths from Texas to Alberta that don't go through Quebec. I hope they make it through okay!