American Solar Challenge Completed: Blue Went

s20451 writes: "The American Solar Challenge solar car race wrapped up yesterday in Claremont, California, with the University of Michigan winning. According to this article in the Globe and Mail, two Canadian teams finished in the top five: Waterloo and Queen's, finishing third and fourth, respectively. Go Canada!"

Re:sun powers the world

One would think that the intelligent players would already be expanding their business beyond the dead dinosaur fuel industry into alternative fuels. There's no reason the big fuel makers can't also dominate the production of alternative energy as well. If anything, they're the ones who have the know-how and the backing to implement such a massive widescale infrastructure upgrade. Alternative cars will NOT be feasible for Joe Average Consumer until there is a fueling station on everything block like there is today with gasoline and it takes less than 5 minutes to refuel. That means no sitting overnight while you tricklecharge your 60HP Rice Rocketmobile and that means not having to drive 30 miles away to fuel up your eco-geek car because they're the only ones that sell Absurdoline on your metropolitan area.

Re:Now, only if...

...people would realize that this post was no where near insightful.

We read a post where people are spending lots of money to expand this and other forms of clean energy. The winning car was $1M with grants from major oil companies and car componies! Thats a lot of money for a car that will only take a one way trip and will never break 2k miles.

And then he writes as if speaking to a world ignorant to this he wishes people would relize we could expand on this and other forms of clean energy... And gets moderated up for it?

Many other well informed posts actually discuss the practicality and requirements of this and other clean technologies. They are informative, insightful and educational. In the interest of real science Read them, this is mearly a fool looking for a paradise.


~^~~^~^^~~^

Re:Now, only if...

And I suppose you don't notice Dick Cheney's hand up Bush's ass.

Bush is the goatse.cx guy?

:)

Pushing the boundaries of solar technology

The cost of the cars ranged from $30,000 to more than $1-million.

I bet most of that went into top-of-the-line solar cells.

The good thing about races like this is that effort is put into designing the very best cells possible, and a side effect is (eventually, we hope) better solar cells available to the community market.

A major advance was made (the so called 'green cells' in Australia for the Australian solar challenge a few years ago).

A good resource on PV cells (notice my Australian bias!) is http://acre.murdoch.edu.au/refiles/pv/text.html [murdoch.edu.au].

Woohoo!

I went to Waterloo, and their solar car project is one of the babies of the university. I'm very proud to hear of both Waterloo and Queen's doin' the top 5! I did a 94% in highschool, and Waterloo kicked the crap out of me (Electrical engineering.) It's rumoured that the U of Waterloo's engineering program is one of the top 5 egineering programs (electrical, computer, systems) in north america .. I definately know it's the hardest in Canada.

So go Canada! :)

Money

The cost of the cars ranged from $30,000 to more than $1-million.

Is the really a test of engineering acumen, or more of a test of who has the most money to throw at the problem?

California Dreaming

My sister was one of the backup drivers for the Midnight Sun VI [uwaterloo.ca] team.. Heck, I'm wearing a Midnight Sun VI T-shirt right now! Anyways, This is UW's best placing so far in all their years racing. So congrats to all the guys and gals on the team!
Here's a vignette from one of her updates:

Driving the solar car: Is plenty of fun! I've driven through Missouri, Oklahoma (where I experienced an unpleasant bout of dehydration), New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The most beautiful places to drive through are New Mexico and Arizona. NM has gorgeous mountain ranges and scenery that is taken straight out of a Western movie. I drove through the Zule mountain range into Albuquerque and also from Flagstaff to Kingman, Arizona. The stretch of geography from NM into AZ is incredible. In the evening, as the sun sets, the most beautiful hues of colours are reflected off the mountain ranges and the stars are brilliant against the night sky.

Apparently, they were the loudest gang out there. Go Team! Now it's prep time for the World Solar Challenge [wsc.org.au].

Re:sun powers the world

Who are we kidding? As long as oil companies have the power and money that they do, alternative power sources will never come into their own.

I'm sick of you damn crazy hippies complaining all the damn time.
If you hate the oil companies, stop using their products.

It *is* possible to live without them. I believe about 60% of the planet does.

And if you don't want to live in the stone age, do your best to avoid the most obvious oil company products: plastics and gasoline. Use an electric car. Don't use a straw or a plastic lid when you eat fast food. Don't buy polyester clothes (yeah, you're not a pimp anyway). Heat your house with solar panels (which a good friend of mine has been doing since 1989 or so). Stop using certain paints and other coatings on your car/house/toenails. Power your house with energy from a company that uses hydroelectric or nuclear (deregulation can be ok if you're outside California), etc.

If the linux revolution has shown us *anything* it should be that we CAN AVOID THE CORPORATE BEHEMOTHS!

Detailed race results

The day by day races results can be found here [formulasun.org]:

Chicago to California is a decent road trip

On another note

On sunny days, and on flat stretches of highway, the cars hit speeds as high as 110 kilometres an hour.

which is starting to be respectable.

Are they going to the World Solar Challenge?

World Solar Challenge [wsc.org.au] is the probably the longest solar car race. It started about 13 years ago. It is scheduled for Nov or Oct this year.

Re:Woohoo!

Everything is tops at UW, or at least it used to be (I gradudated in 1986). Back then, it was the top engineering school, the top CS school (Microsoft recruited heavily) and the physics program (that I graduated from) was a bear. It sounds like things haven't changed.

The solar car project is a teriffic achievment, I only wish it had been going on when I was around. (Back then we had cars mad of wood and stone, etc)

UM Team

The UM solar car team's web site Here [umich.edu] has some neat photos [umich.edu] of the team and the car, as well as the wind tunnel testing, etc...

Pretty cool, now if they can only get it so that you could power an SUV...

Re:sun powers the world

It's not the evil corporations, it's the Stonecutters, dammit!

Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!

Now, only if...

...people would relize we could expand on this and other forms of clean energy instead of spending money to burn coal.