Speaker 1: In early October, special vehicles prepared to race three thousand
Speaker 1: kilometers across Australia from Darwin to Adelaide. These cars all
Speaker 1: had one thing in common. They ran on sunlight. I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and this is tech stuff daily. The race
Speaker 1: is called the World Solar Challenge. Hans Fulstrip and Larry
Speaker 1: Perkins built the foundation for the race way back in
Speaker 1: ninety two when they built and drove a solar powered
Speaker 1: car named the Quiet Achiever across Australia from the west
Speaker 1: to the east. Five years later, Thulstrop had organized a
Speaker 1: full challenge to pit teams against one another. The challenge
Speaker 1: isn't just about going fast, It's about engineering a vehicle
Speaker 1: capable of making the most out of the energy harvested
Speaker 1: from the sun. So why create such a competition. It's
Speaker 1: not just a design challenge. According to the twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: World Solar Challenge Regulations, the purpose of the race is
Speaker 1: to quote stimulate research into and development of sustainable road
Speaker 1: transport in the quote. This year's winning vehicle and the
Speaker 1: challenger class was the Noonah nine. A Dutch team of
Speaker 1: engineers built the Noonnah nine and held onto their winning
Speaker 1: record The same team has won three of these challenges
Speaker 1: over the last few years. The NOONNAH nine traveled at
Speaker 1: an average speed of eighty one point two kilometers per hour,
Speaker 1: which is about fifty five miles per hour. Because the
Speaker 1: vehicles depend upon solar power, they only traveled during daylight hours.
Speaker 1: The race had seven checkpoints that the vehicles had to reach,
Speaker 1: and the race could only last from eight am to
Speaker 1: five pm each day. In total, the NOONAH nine raced
Speaker 1: for thirty seven hours, ten minutes and forty one seconds.
Speaker 1: That's four hours longer than the team's fastest time, but
Speaker 1: environmental fact there's like wind slowed down the progress this year.
Speaker 1: What does it take to raise a car using solar
Speaker 1: power as the main energy source. First, it means most
Speaker 1: of the car's upper surface is home to hundreds of
Speaker 1: solar cells. It's the job of these cells to convert
Speaker 1: light into electricity. As you can imagine, it means making
Speaker 1: a lot of sacrifices to improve efficiency. Vehicles must be
Speaker 1: very light and precisely engineered to be as aerodynamic as possible.
Speaker 1: Factors like drag and rolling resistance can have a big
Speaker 1: effect on a car's performance. They also must be incredibly
Speaker 1: lightweight on the order of a few hundred pounds per car.
Speaker 1: The average weight of a consumer vehicle is closer to
Speaker 1: four thousand pounds. Anything that doesn't directly contribute to operating
Speaker 1: the vehicle is superfluous and typically excluded from the car's design.
Speaker 1: Vehicles are allowed to have an onboard battery to supplement
Speaker 1: solar power. The battery charges whenever the car is receiving
Speaker 1: more solar power than is necessary to provide energy to
Speaker 1: the electric odor. Typically, car designs also allow for battery
Speaker 1: charging to happen whenever a car is traveling downhill and
Speaker 1: gravity takes over. The challenge features tweaks to rules and
Speaker 1: regulations each time it happens. This year, that included allowing
Speaker 1: for a larger maximum vehicle size, which gave teams more
Speaker 1: options when designing their cars. However, the amount of solar
Speaker 1: collector area shrunk a bit. The maximum surface area that
Speaker 1: could host solar cells in a Challenger class race car
Speaker 1: was four square meters. That's half the size of what
Speaker 1: cars could use during the first World Solar Challenge in seven.
Speaker 1: The reduction shows how far teams have advanced in their
Speaker 1: design since that first race. Other regulations involved how high
Speaker 1: a driver's eyes must be from the surface of the
Speaker 1: road no less than seven hundred millimeters, the number of
Speaker 1: wheels allowed per vehicle that would be four, and the
Speaker 1: mass requirement for a driver, which was eight krams. If
Speaker 1: a driver's mass was below eighty kilograms, the challenge provide
Speaker 1: canvas bags filled with steel shot to serve as ballast.
Speaker 1: The race provides a tangible challenge for engineering teams. Groups
Speaker 1: have to take many factors into account, including terrain, weather conditions,
Speaker 1: solar panel efficiency, and vehicle design. These guide the teams
Speaker 1: as they make decisions about their vehicles, and those design
Speaker 1: choices might inform future vehicle design or solar power deployment.
Speaker 1: This doesn't mean we'll all be driving around in solar
Speaker 1: powered jelaps in a few years, though. A secondary competition
Speaker 1: in the World Solar Challenge pits vehicles that follow a
Speaker 1: more consumer friendly design called the Cruiser Class as they
Speaker 1: race across Australia. But this could also mean we see
Speaker 1: solar panels incorporated into electric vehicles to supplement the car's
Speaker 1: power needs. It's even possible that solar powered car might
Speaker 1: serve as an electrical generator for a home, storing excess
Speaker 1: energy in your house's battery pack. So while you're not
Speaker 1: going to jump behind the wheel of a solar racer
Speaker 1: unless you're on one of these teams, the technology developed
Speaker 1: in the pursuit of that a elusive championship could make
Speaker 1: its way into a car you drive in the future,
Speaker 1: or in your home, or in one of a hundred
Speaker 1: ways we don't even anticipate at this point. That's all
Speaker 1: for today. To learn more about solar power, race cars,
Speaker 1: and all other things tech, subscribe to the tech Stuff podcast.
Speaker 1: I do a deep dive on tech topics over there
Speaker 1: to find out what the heck is making that weird
Speaker 1: beeping noise Figuratively speaking, I'll see you guys again soon.