Engineer Enea: UNSW team the underdog in solar racing challenge

THE solar car team from UNSW will compete with other international entrants in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.

46 teams from around the globe will be racing the 3021km from Darwin to Adelaide, starting 18 October and concluding 25 October.

The USNW Solar Racing Team is entering its two-seater sports coupe, the Sunswift eVe, into the race, under the Cruiser Class, which is the most technically challenging division. The Sunswift eVe is officially the world’s fastest electric car, but will face stiff competition from the Dutch and German teams, which are said to be backed by serious financing. Other competitors in the Cruiser Class are teams from the United States, United Kingdom and Japan.

The University of New South Wales team, made up of 35 engineering students, is eyeing the Stella Lux, a 390 kg carbon fibre and aluminium four-seater car produced by students at the Technical University of Eindhoven, which won the 2013 World Solar Challenge, and has been upgraded substantially since.

The next hot competitor is SunRiser, a slick teardrop-shaped 360 kg aerodynamic collaboration between the German multinational conglomerate ThyssenKrupp and Bochum University of Applied Sciences.

According to Hayden Smith, Sunswift team leader, green engineering and engineering in general is usually better support overseas by corporations and governments. These European teams also operate on a larger budget.

The Australian team is styling itself as the underdogs in the competition, point out that the European competitors have stylish form-fitting interiors with loads of on-board computing power and access to advanced facilities like wind tunnels.

By contrast, the UNSW team uses hand-made components built at a cramped workshop in Randwick, with materials like carbon-fibre shells and silicon solar cells donated by a host of sponsors who have backed the team.

The project is not just about winning: the Sunswift team consists of undergraduate students from engineering, industrial design and business. Team members spend long hours at the workshop, in return for learning how to build a car to road standards and to race standards.

In July 2014, the 360 kg Sunswift eVe broke the world land-speed record for an electric vehicle, travelling at an average 107 km/h over a distance of 500 km on a single charge.

The design and construction of Sunswift eVe began in early 2012 and was completed within 18 months, in time for the 2013 World Solar Challenge’s new Cruiser Class competition. It cost $500,000, but took out line honours and overall third place in the Cruiser class in 2013, while also hitting the highest top speed of 132 km/h.

On a single charge of its batteries, Sunswift eVe can travel up to 500 km. This distance increases to 800km if it takes power from its own solar cells as well. Once depleted, the batteries can be recharged in 10 hours on a household power socket, or in less than 7 hours using a commercial charging station.