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Science Technology

Solar Car To Retrace Cross-Australian Route 84

Posted by timothy from the too-bad-about-the-ac dept.
Dave Snowdon writes "Its been 20 years since Quiet Achiever, the first solar car, crossed Australia from West to East (~4000km). Sunswift 2, the UNSW solar car is set to retrace the original route, in order to set a new transcontinental record. The original car took 21 days, Sunswift is expected to complete in less than 7."
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Solar Car To Retrace Cross-Australian Route More

Solar Car To Retrace Cross-Australian Route

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  • wow, that is pretty interesting. i wonder how far away a commercial application is.
  • I'll be happy when they can manage that in the UK. They might be lucky to catch an hour of sun in a day.

  • transcontinental record (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wouldn't it be easier to cross a continent where it is thin, like crossing America at the level of Panama?
    • Wouldn't it be easier to cross a continent where it is thin, like crossing America at the level of Panama?

      It's a shorter route, yes. However, it wouldn't have the nostalgic value (of doing the same route as Hans). The same team (perhaps with a slightly different set of people) competed in the World Solar Challenge [wsc.org.au] last year which is from north to south as you describe.

      Tom Rowlands
      (Sorry, I can't sign this.)

  • ...for everyone who wants to travel across australia in less than 8.5 days ...when the sun is shining.
    • not yet. These cars are actually nothing like the cars we drive yet. There are several obstacles to overcome before they become in widespread use

      1) These cars can only hold one person, and they can barely hold one person. It is really uncomfortable, barely tolerable. Weight is a huge factor; carrying many people is a big problem

      2) These things are expensive! (Mainly the solar panels)

      3) The maximum speed of most cars (which is actually rapidly improving) is barely high enough for the highway.

      4) You can only drive so far in the night. The batteries arent that strong

      5) The super-sleek designs cannot be used if these cars are going to cary more people/things. (they need more power to overcome the resistance of the air)

      for more info, here [umich.edu] is the website of arguably the best north american team. it's full of info
      • > not yet. These cars are actually nothing like the cars we drive yet.
        > There are several obstacles to overcome before they become in widespread use

        ...hehe :) I quess my joke was bad enough to not be considered as joke ;)))

      • You are missing the point of the whole exercise. I was involved in the construction of solar boat in college, (only the big schools can afford car programs now) Solar and electric etc car programs, develop alot of new technologies that enter the maintstream. Lightweight construction techniques and new motor technologies help industry as whole. Solar cells themselves get field tested under stressful conditions. Although solar cars will never be sold to consumers, things that look like them will. Cheap molded composite aerodynamic autos, powered by incredibly efficient gas or hybrid engines (130 mpg or so) are necessary to get the 3rd world on wheels.

        Right now we are seeing solar panels on some cars to power small vent fans and tickle charge batteries.
        • I was involved in the construction of solar boat in college


          Wow, me too. Our design worked pretty well weather the sun was shining or not (get it? huh?)- the solar power was stored in the atmosphere, by way of a heat differential between the equator and the poles. This drove the 'wind' engine which directly powered the boat's 'sails', which we used to harness the solar power. It was lots of fun and I learnt heaps.

          Seriously though--> if you travel out to way offshore islands (Bermuda for example), the only fossil fuel powered boats you'll see there are large displacement-hulled ships which store many thousands of galons of diesel. All the big expensive sports-fishers and the like are tied to the gas pumps and never get too far off the coast with their limited range..

          Oh yeah, and there'll be a bunch of 30' rag-tag sailboats belonging to regualar folk.. which is kind of a special club for the non-rich sailor types to be a part of.

          point is, harnessing 'alternative energy' doesn't really require super high-tech composites, mega-bucks, and the like. Some of the really really old 'solar' power derivatives have been around for yonks and actually work pretty well. No better way to get a boat across the ocean on a budget than a good old sail.

          I guess I just can't figure out the reason to build a solar boat (aside from it being an exercise for the hydrodynamics students). Would a sailboat be technically illegal in such a race??

          Oh, and I'd like to see a race between one of those skateboard come windsurfer thingies and a trans-oz solar car..

          Although solar cars will never be sold to consumers


          So sure are we?
          What I'd really like to see is a couple of flexible solar panels molded into the roofs of a hybrid car or electric golf cart. Wouldn't fully power the thing, but would certainly help increase efficency a little bit, and would increase the coolness factor a large bit.

          Might actually extend the recharge interval considerably for the occasional use golf cart parked/driven in the sun.

          {/dream}
        • Don't forget durability when you talk of 3rd world. Spare parts are always a problem in 3rd world countries (at least, it was in Africa where I lived for 16 years). And personal transport isn't a high priority. Public transport would be (efficient public transport is a Good Thing), but still not as important as clean running water (and other sanitation), health care and education.

          Cheers!

          Costyn.
      • not yet. These cars are actually nothing like the cars we drive yet. There are several obstacles to overcome before they become in widespread use snip 3) The maximum speed of most cars (which is actually rapidly improving) is barely high enough for the highway.

        Your other points are solid but... Our [act.edu.au] car has been `unofficially' clocked at 139 km/h (about 85 m/h) and can quite happily hold 120 km/h (about 73 m/h). Sunswift (the car referred to in the posting) is a good bit better than ours. There are no races where it is in our advantage to hold such speeds, but the cars can perform where necessary!

        Tom Rowlands
        (Sorry, I can't sign this.)

    • The average solar insulation on earth's surface is about 100 watts per square foot (Obviously it may be more or less depending on weather and geological location). That means you need about 7.5 square feet of collection area for every horsepower, assuming photo-voltaic cells that are 100% efficient. In your dreams! Current PV technology is about 15-18% real efficiency.

      Even with 'perfect' cells, A 3.5hp lawnmover would need a collector with an active surface the size of a 8'x4' sheet of plywood. Imagine what you would need for even a modest 75hp metro-sized two seater!
      I don't even think they even make road-worthy cars that small, even gas powered.

      Electric vehicles may yet have their day in the sun, but they certaintly won't be powered by it.
      =Smidge=

  • Wow! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Hilleh ( 561336 )
    That is the coolest thing since sliced bread. And I mean, that stuffs pretty cool. Because, you know, at first you're like "Oh I have to slice my own bread." Then you're like "Holy shit! No I don't!" Then some Ninjas jump out.

    However, I digress. Kudos to UNSW for taking steps to put environmentally sound cars on the market. Granted, this technology won't be applicable everywhere. For the forseeable future, people are still going to need gas-powered cars. Though, if these are cheap enough (once mass produced), it might be very economical to have one around for daily use and only bring out the gas-powered ones on long hauls/cloudy days. Anyone know how long (on a full charge) this car can go without a significant amount of light? That's going to be a make or break factor.

  • A ha! (Score:2, Funny)

    by vectus ( 193351 )
    The original car took 21 days, Sunswift is expected to complete in less than 7

    If the original thingy took like, 21 days, and this new thingy is going to take 7 days, then that means that

    21/7 = 3

    The new one is like, 3 times as good as the old one.

    And people say us liberal arts students are good for nothing.

    • It's been 20 years... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      a 3-fold improvement in 20 years means a 3^(1/20) = 1.056 improvement per year, or log(2^(1/1.5))/log(3^(1/20)) = 8.41 times slower than Moore's Law (doubling every 18 months). That's what you could compute with a math degree.
    • But don't you know that 3=pi? So that means the new one can run circles around the old one!!
      Ought to qualify me for a marketing degree, that should!
    • Or with a science degree you'd know that as energy goes with the square of velocity, that the car is producing 9 times the energy (ignoring drag), and I doubt if it has a very different mass to the original, so the batteries have 9 times the energy densities of the old cells. Take your pick as to whether this is 18 or 81 times better than the original.

      This is why scientists only trust liberal arts students to do simple maths like adding up McDonalds orders, or balancing the budget.
  • Twenty years and still no electric cars on *our* roads...
    • Really? Where do you live? Even in the US, we have electric cars. Are you in Afghanistan or something?
      • Do you have an electric car?
        Does your neighbour have an electric car?
        In France, only some administrations use electric cars, or maybe electric cars dealers

        I wanted to point out that the technology is getting old without getting mainstream...

  • So... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by damiam ( 409504 )
    How long would it take the average gas-powered car to cross Australia along that route?
    • Well, 4000km is about 1800 miles (for those of us who can't use SI units bigger than a meter easily), and at a normal highway speed of about 65 mph you are looking at about 27.6 hours of travel time. With the right amount of caffeine, it could be done in exactly 1.15 days, plus or minus gas station time and speeding. :)
      • Actually its more like 2436mi (4000*.609), so it'd take 34.8 hours at 70MPH or 24 hours at 101.5MPH (I can imagine there being many cops in the middle of Australia...)

        • Please people, use what we were given by GNU instead of relying on half-remembered things from school.

          $ units
          1948 units, 71 prefixes, 28 functions
          You have: 4000km
          You want: miles
          * 2485.4848

          At a very reasonable 30 meters per second it would take 37 hours. If you were driving more quickly, say 45 meters per second it would take just over 24 hours. Even on completely empty roads I would not recommend travelling at more than 40-50 meters per second for safety reasons. Neither the roads nor the cars were really designed for such high speeds.

        • Back in the old days, the only speed limit out there was what speed you were prepared to risk (it wasn't even sealed till the 1970s). Nowadays, whilst the road is quite good and gunbarrel-straight, it is policed by Australian cops who generally have a zero tolerance towards speeding. Backroads, you ask? There aren't any out there. There isn't anything except the road out there. "Nullabor" apparently translates as "Nothing" from the local Aboriginal dialect...

          If you *do* want to experiment with warp factor nine, there *are* plenty of backroads in other areas of Australia, or there is the Adelaide-Darwin road. Once you cross the Northern Territory border, there's no speed limit whatsoever :)

        • In one of Australia's states (can't remember which one sorry), there is an open speed limit for out in the country. Though most of the roads are apparently so harsh that you don't really want to speed.
      • Well, 4000km is about 1800 miles ..
        You are working for the NASA?
    • it is so much easier to work in metric and keep it metric!!

      The distance is 4000 KM. The speed limit in Australia is 100KM/H in most parts.

      That means it would take 40 hours non stop travelling at the speed limit. You are also required to slow down to 50KM/H when travelling through populated areas. I don't know how many populated areas you would travel through, but there would be a few. especially at the start and finish areas.
      Of course you will need to stop for eating and toilet breaks, and perhaps even sleeping :)

      I hope there is airconditioning in the car - it can get mighty warm :)
    • Does this bicycle come with extra wheels when one goes flat? Or a stopwatch? Or a real neat horn? I want one that flies like angels, with wings and a trumpet.

    • too bloody long (Score:3, Informative)

      by blisspix ( 463180 )
      been there, done that. Perth to Melbourne in 3.5 days, taking into account sleeping at night and such. You'd be nuts to go any faster, it's too hot along the Nullabor.

  • the audi A6... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by thanasakis ( 225405 )
    has a small solar cell fitted to its roof. When it is hot (e.g. during the summer mostly) the energy is used to power a small air-condition unit (not the car's regular A/C) to keep the interior cold. Perhaps through gradual steps like that could the automobille industry move to a more ecologicaly sound era. It wouldn't be bad if my car could draw energy from the sun, even only or non-essential systems such as the car stereo. I personally do not believe that solar-only cars are anywhere near in the future. Perhaps hybrid cars, like toytota prius are the best bet for today. They can use both gas and electricity so one could use the first to travel long distances and the second to move inside the city.
  • When when I read this article, all I could think about was "Skin Cancer"...
  • In other news, Burger King [burgerking.com] (sporting a new logo) sues Hungry Jack's [hungryjacks.com.au] (a sponsor for the new solar car) for trademark violations - it seems they also have retained rights to their old logo [couponpages.com].

    Or is it the other way around?

    • Hungry Jack's is the Australian franchise of Burger King. It even says so right on their website!
      • whoops! I just noted the similarity, and posted as a knee-jerk. Ouch, but thanks for the info :_)
        • Did I mention I was trying to be funny?
          • Sorry if it seemed like I was trying to chew you out :). It's just that Hungry Jacks is also a former sponsor of my solar car team [engga.uwo.ca]. The owner of the franchise is a graduate of my school, so he helped us out quite a bit in the past. I was just trying to clear up the misinformation (and include a shameless plug while I'm at it :)
            • No problem, Tom. Maybe this guy would like to sponsor my solar powered off-road motorcycle? (kidding :)

              But, imagine trying to "cowtrail" with panels spanning about 20x the footprint of the bike? BTW, I'm your neighbor almost, here in W. Michigan...:)

      • Actually the BK HJ relationship is vastly more complex than that http://hsc.ozlpn.com/courses/arts/legal/2002_Legal _A_Law_Society_Guirguis.pdf
        • I'm really glad that I posted the parent to this. I consider a day that I don't learn something to be wasted - and I've learned much today :)).

          Now, back to the bonfire! Happy holiday!

    • The only difference is that you can probably order oil cans of beer with your hamburger at Hungry Jack's.
  • Back in high school, I was involved in a solar car project. The main problem with mainstreaming solar cars is the solar cells. The 10 cm X 10 cm wafers of silicon are too delicate and rigid. Flexible solar cells [sciencedaily.com] made of plastic and organic materials promises to change this. Depending on how efficient they can be made to be, solar cells may make it into production cars one day.
    • Yeah, actually the closest thing I can imagine to a production solar-powered car would be something like this: take a standard (erm, future-standard) fuel-cell car, coat the entire body with nice flexible solar cells, and use the solar cells to recharge the battery and/or hydrolize water to refill the hydrogen tank. The solar cells wouldn't provide enough power to run the car on, but they might save you some money at the gas station, especially if you keep your car parked in sunny parking lots all day...


      Or maybe not, perhaps even then the energy generated wouldn't be significant. Depends on the efficiency of the cells and the car, I suppose.

    • Sunswift's cells were grown in-house at UNSW and are far smaller than 10 x x 10cm. In fact, they also developed their own lamination technique, which was pretty slick. It was one of the more impressive vehicles at the 2001 World Solar Challenge.
  • That's a nice trip down memory lane. Years ago, Crowder College [crowder.edu] built a solar car for what was then essentially the same race (across Australia). They even brought the car to the shopping complex I worked at, I gave them $25 or $50 or something like that, and got a little piece of paper calling me a sponsor. I could have gotten a ride in the car for another $20 if I had shown up at the demonstration earlier; they were giving rides off the battery stores for almost 3 hours as the sun set. But the like of potential passengers was longer than the battery life, and I was at the end of the line.

    The car was pretty cool, with a 'central tunnel' design and airplane-wing arc sides that would supposedly give the car an advantage in sidewinds (expected in the race). I would love to spend a couple of years working on a project like that; everything from electronics and power mamagement to aerodynamics and mechanical engineering. Of course they aren't practical, probably never will be, but give the lucky geeks that get to work on projects like this the fun of their work!

    They didn't do too bad for a little college without much funding (lower-grade photovoltaics, less efficient motors, and 'bailing wire and duct tape' centric mechanics). They finished the race, I think just barely in the bottom half of finishers, and something like the 2nd best 'time per dollar spent' status. I'm sure I still have the certificate down in the bottom of a box somewhere, too. It was sort of fun getting into the whole thing, keeping track of the race and cheering the team.

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