World Solar Challenge About To Start

SustainableJeroen writes "On Sunday morning (Australian time), October 6th, 40 solar-powered vehicles from 24 countries will depart from Darwin and make their way south along the 3000km Stuart Highway towards Adelaide in the 2013 World Solar Challenge. About half of the vehicles compete in the Challenger class, the class which features what many people will recognize as typical solar racing cars: flat, UFO-like vehicles, built exclusively for efficiency and speed. For the first time, however, much more practical vehicles will race each other in the new Cruiser class. These vehicles will seat two, three of four people and be road legal. In both 2009 and 2011, the University of Michigan Solar Car Team finished third, Nuon Solar Team finished second and Tokai University finished first. The fastest vehicles will be expected to reach Adelaide on Thursday or Friday, depending on the weather."

Energy from the sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the sun were good for anything, somebody would have patented it already, instead it's just been uselessly shining for billions of years and doing nothing to make money.

Re:

[rubycodez]

oh come on, the sun powers plants, which our four-legged food eats.

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[Austrian Anarchy]

oh come on, the sun powers plants, which our four-legged food eats.

the sun also powers garlic, which is especially yummy on food.

Re:Energy from the sun?

[rubycodez]

and Big Oil makes carbon dioxide, What Plants Crave.

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[WillAffleckUW]

Solar energy is currently cheaper than oil.

Just in case you wondered.

And it's rapidly becoming cheaper than wind, and almost as cheap as coal.

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[i kan reed]

Yes, we know, you're completely bored with work to advance human understanding and engineering, and have become as bored with those who do interesting things, as you have in your own petty life.

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[Austrian Anarchy]

It's as fascinating as NASCAR, people have been racing solar powered vehicles for almost 30 years, so it's boring fucking news.

Get one in my driveway, then we can talk about interesting things.

NASCAR is solar powered. Where do you think gasoline comes from?

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[SustainableJeroen]

Yeah, but the ancient sunshine NASCAR runs on is running out, and even it wasn't, it has nasty side effects. These solar cars run on current sunshine, without many side effects.

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[SJHillman]

"For the first time, however, much more practical vehicles will race each other in the new Cruiser class. These vehicles will seat two, three of four people and be road legal. "

I'd call that an interesting thing if getting one in your driveway is the ultimate goal.

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[aevan]

Which is why the Cruiser class makes this year's event somewhat interesting (at least to me).

Now when they have the '2 adults, 2 kids and a trunk load of groceries' class, then I'll be following it closely :P

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[SJHillman]

Man, 3000km for groceries? And I thought all the nuts who loved Wegmans and Trader Joes were crazy.

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[NatasRevol]

There's a Wegman's at one end, and a Trader Joe's at the other end.

Quick! Who has the cheapest hummus?

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[SustainableJeroen]

Meh? So you're going to show us your hand-built carbon fibre solar-powered vehicle which can cross 3000 km without breaking down - and do all this faster than the vehicles of some of the smartest young people on the planet? ...I thought so.

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[rubycodez]

if they were really smart they'd be working on viable and useful transportation means, such as conversion of scrubland biomass to fuel for existing internal combustion engines. direct conversion of sunlight to electricity by collectors on the vehicle is not a viable vehicle power

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[Khashishi]

define viable

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[rubycodez]

Viable would include parts about something people could use for transportation in most parts of the country

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[Khashishi]

That seems like exactly what the cruiser class is supposed to get at.

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[dbIII]

A fucking bicycle is viable in some situations so please lay off the utterly stupid and incorrect blanket statements. Just because you can't put a tiny panel on an SUV and move it doesn't mean that the technology is useless.

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[cusco]

Something some corporation can make money on while shafting their customers and suing anyone who tries to do anything even vaguely similar.

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[SJHillman]

Baby steps. That's what the Cruise class is... a step in the right direction. And it could be viable for certain markets, although not necessarily consumers. We're already going towards electric vehicles. The next step could be a plug-in electric car with a roof solar panel option. I could see it being very popular in the warmer climes. Drive to work, leave it in the parking lot and let the sun recharge it for the 8 hours you're not using it anyway. It's that much less time/money you have to spend on rechar

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[WillAffleckUW]

scrubland biomass is frequently not a wise choice. Solar is currently cheaper than oil, and cheaper than wind, and rapidly becoming as cheap as coal.

Adapt. Because if you don't you'll get left in the dust.

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[dbIII]

Not the exact quote, but there was one along the line of "at current rates, by 1950 the streets of London will be buried under sixty feet of horse manure".
The answer for the future is not always a better horse or a better internal combustion engine for that matter.
BTW, this race is showing that it is viable for the vehicles they are using so your comment above is likely to have been disproved in some cases before you were born. That demonstrates a truly depressing lack of awareness and imagination coupled

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[NatasRevol]

Suck it.

I bought THE Saturn!

Tough road

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has ever driven any portion of this road knows they'll have plenty of sunshine, but a very challenging trip ahead. This trip is hard to make in a conventional vehicle. One thing about it, though, they won't have to worry about running out of petrol between Tenant Creek and Alice.

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[SustainableJeroen]

Yep, that's true. The mandatory control stops every few hundred kilometres are more for the chase vehicles than anything else. They need to refuel, whilst the solar car could go on.

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[mathew42]

The Stuart Highway [wikipedia.org] is a reasonable stretch of road. The road has been fully sealed since the mid-1980s. It is predominately flat with few that require slowing down. The biggest danger is probably kangaroos or cattle.

I'm Tired Of Tissue Paper Racers

[IonOtter]

It's about time we start to see PRACTICAL vehicles in this contest!

I hope they do well!

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

What about a competition of automatic, solar-powered trucks? Perfect for Australia.

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[Toad-san]

Damned right! I'm thinking this puppy will do just fine .. replacing the missile pods with a few solar cell panels of course, just to be sporting and all.

http://www.warn.com/blog/images/1945/landmaster.jpg [warn.com]

The other vehicles are going to be unarmed too, right? Right?

Hoping the UW team places in final three

[WillAffleckUW]

I like their design this year.

The fun part has been that many of the people involved have also been working on new technology for patents in solar, biofilm, energy storage.

Heck, we're so hot here we light Teslas on fire - because we can!

come on Seattle!

Poor proofreading / editing

[drussell]

These vehicles will seat two, three of four people...

I'm not quite sure how to parse that one and/or do the math. Three of four people!? Is that like some kind of musical chairs in the car at each stop and someone rides up on the roof with the solar panels? Sign me up! Sounds like fun as long as I'm the driver! :-)

Why just solar?

[Hentes]

I'm curious how well these cars would hold up against stored electric vehicles, or even bicycles.