Zipping through the Australian outback this weekend is a red car looking more race boat than sedan and which travels at highway speeds using about the same amount of power it takes to boil a kettle.<\/p>\n
When and if this futuristic looking craft \u2013 the Unlimited 6.0 \u2013 crosses the finish line for the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge in Adelaide, its team from Western Sydney University will probably celebrate with something a bit stiffer than a cup of tea.<\/p>\n
Among the messages of support written on the vehicle\u2019s solar panels for the engineering students trying to develop breakthroughs in solar car design, is one that reads: \u201cget this man a beer\u201d.<\/p>\n
No doubt the team will deserve a cold drink after a gruelling 3,000km race from Darwin across some of the world\u2019s harshest and most remote terrain. But it won\u2019t be all blokes who will be celebrating.<\/p>\n
No ordinary car \u2026 inside one of the cars racing in the World Solar Challenge. Photograph: Lloyd Jones\/AAP<\/p>\n
Returning for her second race, veteran Micah Honan has taken on the role of electrical lead \u2013 one of added significance in 2025 with a new design challenge for the race of ensuring the car runs efficiently with reduced sunlight \u2013 this year\u2019s event is being held in winter for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many solutions for a complicated problem, and everyone solves it a bit differently,\u201d Honan said.<\/p>\n
Moritz Mitzel from Aachen in Germany, the first driver to take to the road in the latest World Solar Challenge, starting in Darwin on Sunday. Photograph: Lloyd Jones\/AAP<\/p>\n
\u201cI love learning how and why something works, or how and why it doesn\u2019t. Engineering is not just a field of study, but a mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Western Sydney University team is one of 34 cars from 17 countries preparing to race their sun-powered vehicles across the outback in a test of innovative technology that may drive the solar-powered cars of tomorrow.<\/p>\n
The twice-yearly event began in 1987 and attracts an online audience of millions of people, who watch the race of solar-powered cars designed, engineered and built at universities and schools in Australia and overseas.<\/p>\n
After the teams leave Darwin they must travel as far as they can until 5pm each day, when they make camp in the desert.<\/p>\n
Sign up: au breaking news email<\/a><\/p>\n Event ambassador Chris Selwood said designing and building a solar car to travel 3,000km, qualifying for the race, then making it to the start was \u201can incredible achievement for those with dreams of a more sustainable future\u201d.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cSafety for everyone is paramount and that\u2019s one area that can\u2019t be compromised,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n Teams face extreme heat, vast open desert stretches and varied terrain in three classes: challenger, cruiser and explorer.<\/p>\n The cruiser class was created to encourage \u201cgreen to the mainstream\u201d concept cars fitted with innovative, sustainable and potentially practical features that could find their way into real-world design.<\/p>\n Driver-only challenger class cars must travel 3,000km on the power of sunshine, while cruisers carry a passenger and in addition to solar power are allowed to charge from external sources after 5pm each day.<\/p>\n The explorer class provides an even broader platform to showcase prospective ideas, technology and renewables.<\/p>\n Overseas entrants this year include teams from Germany, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Estonia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zipping through the Australian outback this weekend is a red car looking more race boat than sedan and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-91515","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91515","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=91515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}