Stanford University’s 375-pound, panel-covered solar car rolled across the finish line of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge in Adelaide, Australia, on Oct. 10 — taking fourth in a 2,000-mile international solar car race through the Australian outback.
The car, Luminos, was the first American car to finish the contest, which is designed to encourage innovation in solar-powered car design. Two teams from the Netherlands and a team from Japan finished before it.
“Placing fourth is great for our team,” said Wesley Ford, leader of the student-run Stanford Solar Car Project. “It’s probably the best finish that Stanford has had in decades. We’re very happy for the car. We’re happy for the team. We clocked the race in record time, and we’re very, very happy.”
Traveling only by day, the race took the team 39 hours and 31 minutes at a speed of 75.86 kilometers per hour.
The team credited the victory in part to the strategy of building a “robust” that never broke down during the grueling race and cut through strong winds during a middle portion of the race, according to a release.
Team leader Wesley Ford said Luminos represents a step toward creating a solar car that someone might use as an everyday vehicle. It is street legal, and the curving slope of the body utilizes aerodynamics in a way that its predecessor, Xenith, never did.
By Palo Alto Weekly staff
By Palo Alto Weekly staff
By Palo Alto Weekly staff
I want one! Then, just give me lots of sunlight.
Would you believe I’ve been banned, from message boards, for explaining how global warming and climate change are real and dangerous, and HUMANS ARE RESPONSIBLE?
I like the body design, of the fine, Snerdly-junior auto. But I have my own ideas, you know?
I maybe shoulda got into Snerdford and studied engineering, but hey, I’m almost 62, and if you boys and girls get any smarter, the NSA will sic its client corporate contacts on you, and you’ll have to make not a sound.
Of course, since LBJ, the NSA and CIA had microwave tech, to use on college kids, and since Nixon, they used it hard, on CAL, which didn’t finish as well, you see.
Then Pat Nixon got cancer, and Dick made his geeks into patsies, with old-fashioned wire tech, which is a lot more detectable, than microwave surveillance and MIDI, for any riffs, which are good enough for the Stones.
That airfoil is almost good enough, for the pigs to steal, but that would conflict, with their fracking and tar-sands agendas, neat of any DARPA-type devices, to compress CO2 and make methanol, while piping into sealed containers, to grow algae, enabling bio-diesel manufacture, at any furnace.
What can I say? In addition to ranting stupidly, on floors of Congress, and in infested message boards, pubs want to unfund DARPA, which doesn’t get as much publicity, as their opposition, to Obamacare.
Maybe they should make like silent CAL and go bears, but SHUT UP.
Would it be too much to tell us where the first three winning cars where from?
Oops I read the article way too fast. The info was right in there. Sorry!