The World Solar Challenge 2007 in Australia (wikipedia) started on Sunday with 41 solar cars on their way across Austrailia, notes TG Daily.
The 1870 mile race travels from Darwin on the north end, through the Outback, and ends in
Adelaide, in South Australia. The race will officially end on October 28, with first cars are expected to cross the finish line as early as October 25th (pdf map).
Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the challenge was held in 3-year intervals until 1999 and since then has been held every two years.
The previous (2005) race was won by Dutch Nuon Solar Team (Flickr) from the Technical University of Delft, whose Nuon III car crossed the finish line after a race time of 29 hours and 11 minutes. The average speed achieved by Nuon III with a record average speed of 64.3 mph (103 km/h).
The first race was run in 1987 when the winning entry, GM’s Sunraycer won with an average speed of 67 km/h.
United States entries include four teams; Oregon State University and the University of Michigan (blog), will race in the Challenge Class, while Stanford University (blog)and the Houston Solar Car Race Team will race in the smaller Adventure Class. The Houston team is a high school team from the Houston Vocational Center in Houston, Mississippi. A high speed satellite uplink (2Mbps) is being provided by ITC Global, in support of the Netherlands’ team. The Greenfleet technology class is for vehicles demonstrating new automotive technologies offering a substantial improvements in the environmental profile using electric, hybrid, and low carbon fuels.
The Michigan Solar Car Team got off to a bad start after its vehicle, Continuum, crashed into a crew vehicle within the first hour of the 2007 World Solar Challenge on Saturday. The team plans to continue with the race across Australia despite falling a day behind the opposition.
Organizers are planning to bring solar car racing back to North America in 2008. The 2008 North American Solar Challenge will cover 2,400 miles as it heads north from Dallas, Texas, to its end point in Calgary, Alberta. The race is scheduled to start in Dallas on July 13th and end in Calgary on July 21st, with an awards ceremony on July 22nd. Currently some 20 university teams are listed on their website, including 15 teams from the United States and 5 teams from Canada.
Here’s How to Build a Solar Car from Northview High School in Covina, CA.
Speaking of solar, here’s DailyWireless co-founder Don Park (above), explaining his bike-mounted, solar powered Hotspot detector.
In related news, The Urban Challenge, a research project of DARPA, concerns itself with the design of autonomously driven vehicles.
To make the driver dispensable, the vehicles are equipped with instruments that replicate the senses and brainpower of a human being. Urban Challenge begins on Nov. 3 at the former George Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif. There are 36 semifinalists in the running, though the number of teams will be whittled to 20 during the qualification stage in the last week of October.
Other DailyWireless solar stories include; Solis Solar Powered Hotspots, Solar Powered WiMAX & WiFi, Solar Biker, Wireless Camera Adapters, Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Emergency Communications, Minnesota Solar WiFi, Park City: Solar WiFi, Solar Powered Solstice, Webcasting Concerts, TurtleNet, Meshing Tibet and Solar RoofNet Wiki.
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