Wildfires in The Outback, Mechanical Issues and Exploding Car Batteries Have Thinned the Field, While the Dutch Nuna 6 Car Has Dodged Danger and Kept Within Striking Distance of Winning the World Solar Challenge
In contrast to the deafening roar that's standard in a NASCAR or IndyCar race, each of the 37 vehicles competing in the Veolia World Solar Challenge speeds forth in silence. The quiet is courtesy of the sun, which powers these cars.
The Nuna 6 solar car by Hans-Peter van Velthoven. Image courtesy of Nuon Solar Team under a Creative Commons license. (Flickr photo)
The specially designed vehicles may be soothingly quiet, but traversing 1,800 miles along Stuart Highway from Darwin to Adelaide across Australia's Outback is hardly a calming experience. Daytime temperatures routinely top 100 degrees, and at night the mercury plunges near freezing. Dust and sandstorms are common and kangaroo hits are a real threat to the featherweight experimental cars bristling with solar panels.
The threats are not just external. The battery on the Filipino team car exploded while it was being repaired at Tenant Creek in Australia's Northern Territory, engulfing the vehicle in flames. The attrition is considerable: By the race's third day, more than a score of teams had been forced to trailer their vehicles, including the Cambridge University Eco Racing Team previously profiled by Intel Free Press.
The Dutch Nuon Solar team, comprised of students from Delft University of Technology, remained in the thick of the competition when the sun set on the third day of racing. The team stood in second place overall just minutes behind the Tokai Solar Car team from Japan and ahead of the University of Michigan team. The three leaders have been averaging more than 90 km/hour (54 miles an hour).
Inside the Nuna 6 chase car. (Flickr photo)
The Nuna 6 is a 3-wheeled carbon-fiber wisp weighing just 145 kilograms (320 pounds) and stands less than 1 meter high. The Nuon Solar team designed and built Nuna 6 with the help of 13 high-end Intel Core i5- and Core i7-based workstations provided by co-sponsors Intel and Dell. Two of those are systems stashed in a chase car and are digesting and analyzing race data real time via a WiFi link to Nuna 6. The computing horsepower is helping crunch weather data, drive race decisions such as optimal road speed and calculate best use of the car's on-board 21-kg (46-pound) lithium-ion battery. Each vehicle is allotted 5kW hours of stored energy -- enough to power a single 60-watt light bulb for approximately 3 1/2 days. All other power must come from the sun or recovered kinetic energy from the car.
The race is still a long way from Adelaide, but the Nuon Solar team is positioned to build on the success of Nuna 1 through Nuna 5, which includes four gold medals and one silver, in what some call the Formula One of eco-friendly motor sports.
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