By Sally Pobojewski
News and Information Services
Like boxers in training for the championship fight, U-M students and their solar car, Maize & Blue, are trimming down, psyching up and getting in shape for the “big one” in solar car racing—the World Solar Challenge across Australia that begins Nov. 7.
The 21 undergraduates on the Solar Car Team haven’t had much time to savor the Maize & Blue’s June 26 victory in Sunrayce 93, a 1,100-mile race from Dallas to Minneapolis for 34 university-designed solar cars. After collecting their trophy and $66,000 in cash and prizes, they immediately began preparing for the trans-Australia race.
“The World Solar Challenge is a much more difficult and demanding race,” said Furqan Nazeeri, solar car team project manager. “We’ll be up against multi-million-dollar solar cars and professional racing teams financed by major corporations.
“We know it won’t be easy,” Nazeeri added, “but we intend to show the world what Michigan students can do. Anyone who underestimates us will be making a serious mistake.”
Sponsored by Daido Hoxan, the race begins Nov. 7 in Darwin on the Australian north coast. The fastest cars will cross the finish line in Adelaide on the southern coast five to six days later after a grueling 1,864-mile trek across the Australian outback where temperatures often reach 110 degrees and kangaroos are a serious road hazard.
Powered solely by solar energy, cars will race at speeds up to 60 mph from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. each day. Teams will camp at night alongside the edge of the outback’s only highway as they pass through one of the most remote, unpopulated wilderness areas left on Earth.
As of June 2, 64 solar cars from 17 countries were entered in the 1993 World Solar Challenge. Japan has more cars entered in the race than any other country. Many of the 23 Japanese cars were financed and developed by private corporations including Honda, Nissan, Toyota and the Kyocera Corp.
All 11 U.S. entries are university teams, including the second- and third-place finishers in Sunrayce 93—California State University-Pomona and California State University-Los Angeles.
Engineering College of Biel in Switzerland, winner of the 1990 World Solar Challenge, has a new car in the race and will be a major competitor, Nazeeri says.
Many of the corporate cars in the World Solar Challenge will use solar arrays made from thousands of ultra-high-efficiency silicon or gallium-arsenide solar cells designed to convert a greater percentage of the sun’s energy to usable solar power.
“High-efficiency solar cells are extremely expensive; they can cost as much as $110 per cell,” Nazeeri said. “Thanks to the generosity of our corporate sponsors and donors, we’ve been able to purchase enough high-efficiency silicon solar cells to cover about one-half of our solar array.”
When completed, the Maize & Blue’s new solar array for the World Solar Challenge will have 8,756 solar cells, each the size of a razor blade. The array will produce 1,300 watts of peak power in full sunlight—more powerful than the Sunrayce 93 array, but still the equivalent of a portable hair dryer.
Maize & Blue will be propelled across Australia by a three-horsepower electric motor that draws power from the solar array or from the car’s new high-efficiency silver-zinc battery.
Without a driver, the Maize & Blue weighs just 500 pounds—150 pounds less than during Sunrayce 93. “Every pound we take off improves our operating efficiency, so we’ve gone over the car rigorously looking for all possible ways to reduce weight,” Nazeeri said.
Nazeeri emphasized that without the support of the team’s many corporate sponsors and individual donors, it would be impossible for the Maize & Blue to compete in the World Solar Challenge.
“There are so many people who have encouraged and supported the solar car team over the past two years,” Nazeeri said. “We want to win this race for them, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to bring home another victory.”
Major corporate sponsors of the U-M Solar Car Team include Ford Motor Co.; MagneTek, Owosso; Michelin, Automotive Industry Division, Troy; Johnson Controls, Automotive Systems Group, Plymouth; 3M, Automotive Systems Group, Southfield; Christy Industries Inc., Frazier; Briggs Industries Inc., Chesterfield; and IBM, Advanced Workstations & Systems Business, Austin, Tex.
