Stanford Solar Car Project

We made it! After six and a half harrowing days in a race with some of the worst weather in World Solar Challenge history, we have crossed the continent and made a successful top-ten finish. We started out strong, sticking with the front of the pack throughout the first day of racing, but then a series of flat tires caused us to drop back. Falling behind at the point almost did us in as a storm caught us for the next three days: those ahead of us got out in front of it, and t...hose behind us were able to drive slowly in the sun behind it, while we had no choice but to drain our battery as we limped along with thick cloud cover overhead through most of the Northern Territory. Nearing Alice Springs we almost gave up, making the hard decision to trailer the car to meet time requirements, when we learned the midrace control stop had been extended. With no power in our pack and very little power coming from the sun we drove slowly through the storm, doubting we’d be able to make it even with the extension. But then our luck turned around, the lightning and clouds rolled past, a rainbow bent across the sky, and the sun came out! By that point almost half the teams had dropped from Challenger class to the noncompetitive Adventure class and we were dead last of those still in the race. But with the sun above us and a reliable car to drive we sped up and crept forward through the competition, finishing strong in ninth place. Bad luck almost knocked us out of the race and good luck helped propel us back into the top ten, but it wasn’t luck that saw us with a car that can drive solidly for thousands of kilometers and a solar array that can eek out power from cloudy skies. Our team worked incredibly hard on this ambitious, beautiful car, and could not be more proud of the performance it achieved.

We made it across the continent! It was a harrowing journey with horrible weather which took longer than we expected, but we managed a top ten finish still. Thanks to everyone who helped us get here!

Photos from the SSCP's testing and the 2017 World Solar Challenge.

Celebrating #WomeninScience with us is the Stanford Solar Car Project 9 women in the team All 4 solar car drivers women Team lead, electric lead... and aero lead women #BWSC17

Two weeks of Outback testing done! Now we just need to get through a week of scrutineering and it's time to race. One week to go!

Welcome to the Australian Outback. A sign for a pass-through town reads Population: Humans 10, Cows 50, Flies 1,000,000. The dust is orange, marking everything in its path. This is the 1,885 mile journey the Stanford Solar Car team will take as it races its new vehicle, Sundae, in the 2017 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge on October 8th. In early September, we began to test our car in the South Australian Outback. We are stationed around Coober Pedy for the foreseeab...le future to acclimate our drivers to long drives in Outback conditions and test our strategy model. Every night, we debug the car and make necessary improvements and we’ll be doing this until the end of the month. We'll be doing a mix of caravan park and bush camping during this time. When we finish testing and drive up to Darwin, we will have driven 3,033 km or 1,885 miles from Adelaide the whole distance of the World Solar Challenge. See our "WSC 2017" photo album for photos of the route map, Outback, and race crew of 20 who, with the help of the rest of the team in the U.S., spent 20 months designing and building the car to get to this point. And stay tuned -- we can’t wait to share more via Facebook and our Instagram (@stanfordsolarcar).

http://solarcar.stanford.edu//stanford-solar-car-has-arri/

Thanks to Sierra Circuits for their help with board assembly this cycle!