Brian ColeOct 13th, 2007 - 09:03:30

Buidling a solar car is a complex and potentially inordinately expensive undertaking when the goal is to construct a cross-continental type solar challenge car. I don't understand why the DCE team chose to build that type car knowing their resource limitations, excepting those surreal-appearing cars are quite an attention-getter. There are other categories in the Panasonic World Solar Challenge that might have allowed the team to build a more cost-effective and roadworthy vehicle - say modifying a REVA to improve efficiency and use stowable arrays to provide some of the recharge energy.

The resource question is intriguing to me. Though I live in the US, I believe there is the expertise in India to have aided the team with better resources than they may have located. Time may have been the greatest constraint, as many teams have worked hard but not been able to complete a car of this type in 2 years. As for funding, many teams outside India have fundraising and resouce issues which have been quite constraining, including some teams at major schools in America. Other teams have had more money flung at them by their schools than the bemused undergraduates knew how to spend effectively, but that's not the norm. Fundraising is a huge undertaking in itself, especially for first-time teams, and it seems the DCE students just didn't have time to work on both that and building their first solar car.
Building a solar array from scratch from those 'thin solar cells' is a tedious and somewhat complicated undertaking in itself. Not going that route likely had little to do with the team being in India. I'd say the team made the right decision in going with the pre-made panels as they were able to finish the car in time for this year's event, which is major.

I'm looking forward to see the team compete, but if the funds aren't there, I'll understand.

Much as I follow the solar challenge races, I think the event formats and vehicle types being built belong in museums, not being driven on highways and race tracks as examples of futuristic technology. The design form of these cars is quite stagnant. Covering a car with solar cells is a rather lackluster approach to recharging its batteries from the sun. Despite the use of exotic materials and expenditure of obscene amounts of money by so many of the teams, the cars are fragile and impractical beyond belief. They needn't be, but the regulations and a widewspread lack of committment to demand change ensure the cars remain what they've become - caricatures of the Junior Solar Sprint competition cars they inspired!
-brian

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AzaanOct 19th, 2007 - 00:50:35

i think they can do it. because i am an high school student in USA and we have a team of 22 students and we are working on building a solar car and compete on the national level in texas. we just started our project and working towards achieving are goals.

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