<\/p>\n
The Vattenfall team stands together as its solar car burns in front of them. (Facebook: Vattenfall Solar Team)<\/p>\n
The team, then known as Vattenfall, was leading that year’s event when its car caught fire on the Stuart Highway, just south of Port Augusta, about 260 kilometres from the finish line in Adelaide.<\/p>\n
“To rise back from the ashes \u2026 come back stronger every time \u2014 and we drove a record time here to Adelaide \u2014 so I’m really glad,” a Brunel team member said after this year’s race.<\/p>\n
“All the work we did today was based on 25 years of work.<\/p>\n
“This car’s been built within one year with a team of 18 students doing this full time.”<\/p>\n
Winter race ‘for the first time’<\/p>\n
The 34 teams from 18 countries took off from Darwin’s Parliament House on Sunday morning for the 3,000-kilometre journey to Adelaide.<\/p>\n
The solar-powered vehicles, which came in various shapes and sizes, were designed by each team to boost efficiency and endurance.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dutch team Brunel competes in the World Solar Challenge 2025. (Supplied: Jean-Pierre Ronco)<\/p>\n
The competition is not only a battle of scientific minds, but also of extreme durability as participants spend hours in tight-fitting vehicles navigating Australian highways.<\/p>\n
For the first time, the event moved from an October time slot to August.<\/p>\n
The cooler conditions helped drivers but the reduced sunlight increased the challenge.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Western Sydney University team is one of six Australian contenders. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, event ambassador and electrical engineer Chris Selwood said he expected this year’s event to be one of the most closely contested races.<\/p>\n
“Adding to the excitement this year is the timing, with the race being held for the first time in an Australian winter,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Selwood said the challenge also served as a testing ground for technology that could be used in future vehicles.<\/p>\n
“The tyres that were tested last competition are now finding their way already onto production vehicles,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Brunel team last week told ABC Radio Darwin they had improvised on their design from previous years and added a second fin for more speed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Annafloor D’Accona travelled from the Netherlands to Australia to compete. (ABC Darwin: Lillian Watkins)<\/p>\n
“Our fins can actually catch side winds and push it forward, just like an airplane wing,” team member Annafloor D’Accona said.<\/p>\n
“We haven’t told the other teams before because \u2026 maybe they were going to copy it, we want to keep it a secret as long as we could.”<\/p>\n
Australia this year put forward six teams, largely from universities, that have gone head-to-head with the brightest minds from Germany, Italy, Japan, Belgium and other nations.<\/p>\n
The University of Adelaide joined forces with the University of South Australia for the challenge, ahead of both institutions merging in 2026.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Some of the world’s best and brightest race the electric vehicles they’ve designed. (ABC News: Michael Parfitt)<\/p>\n
Manager Adam Palkovics said the team had learned the lessons of past competitions.<\/p>\n
“We’ve learned to do more with less, especially in ‘David versus Goliath’ situations. Our past success has come from building a car that doesn’t break down, and we’ve used those lessons to optimise our new design,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The race is more like a marathon than a sprint. We’ll be adjusting our strategy every 10 minutes to calculate the most energy-efficient speed to cruise at.”<\/p>\n
The finish line in Adelaide’s CBD was set up in Victoria Square, meaning the public can get up close to the cars and test drive electric vehicles from Thursday to Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dutch team Brunel has been crowned the winner of the 2025 World Solar Challenge after a five-day marathon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,49231,99,11214,7569,1474,73747,73744,73745,73746,73748,72180],"class_list":["post-101454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-outback","tag-business","tag-electric-vehicles","tag-evs","tag-innovation","tag-international-race","tag-solar-car-race","tag-solar-racing","tag-solar-vehicles","tag-solar-powered-electric-cars","tag-world-solar-challenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}