University of Michigan Wins the North American Solar (Car) Challenge - Stanford & Cal finish 1-2 in Stock division

source: EERE Network news & Am Solar Challenge 2005.8.3

The University of Michigan held onto a narrow lead over the University of Minnesota last week to win the 2005 North American Solar Challenge. The 2,500-mile solar race—the longest in the world—concluded on July 27th in Calgary, Canada. Despite racing for 54 hours over the course of the event, the Michigan team finished less than 12 minutes ahead of Minnesota, with an average speed of 46.2 miles per hour (this includes low-speed driving in cities and towns). In contrast, the winners of the 2003 race beat their nearest rival by nearly five hours. The race was sponsored by DOE, DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Natural Resources Canada.

Stanford University won the race's "stock" category, in which the cars use lead-acid batteries and less expensive, lower-efficiency solar cells. Despite those limitations, the Stanford team's total racing time was just 14 hours longer than the Michigan team. The Stanford win was particularly impressive after its troubles in the first stage of the race, when it fell more than two hours behind the leading stock solar car. Talk about coming from behind. They never gave up and slowly but surely made up time. In the last stages, they passed CalSol (UC Berkeley) to take a ten minute lead into Medicine Hat despite hitting the solar car with their chase van. Congratulations Stanford University! See the press release (PDF 89 KB), the final race standings, and some parting thoughts from the solar racers (in the last entry of "Reports from the Road" by DOE's Richard King).

Check out Stanfords web blog from the race with photos.

Behind the wheel — of a solar race car [CalSol]
Test drive offers revealing, and confining, look from inside the cockpit. Miguel Llanos of MNBC takes a test drive of Calsol car. Flashvideo report online.

Solar racing fans have just under two months to wait for the next big event: the World Solar Challenge in Australia. The 1,864-mile race bisects the country, departing from Darwin on September 25th and ending in Adelaide some four to seven days later. MIT and University of Michigan are the 2 US teams participating.

Stanford's Solstice car (left) and the CalSol (UC Berkeley) Team [rt]