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| The dashboard of Africa's solar race car is rough and ready compared that of the Stella, but it all works. |
The biennial Bridgestone World Solar Challenge in south Australia will this year see the first entry from Africa and competitors cannot decide whether to treat them as underdogs or dark horses.
A small, underfunded team of 13 students and lecturers from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) School of Engineering will compete against 47 teams from 25 rich countries around the world. The Africans say they intend to go small, but they do not plan on going slow.
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| The interior of the road legal Stella, which will compete in the Cruiser class in the 2015 World Solar Challenge in Oz. |
Co-team manager Kirsty Veale said the South African team will not compete in the Cruiser class for slow vehicles, but the Challenger class for four wheels, which she likened to the F1 of solar car racing.
Masters student Matthew Woods said they will be using the same car that set several South African records in the national 2014 Sasol Solar Challenge and set distance records for the Olimpia Class.
Woods was one of the team who spent a frantic night fixing a burned battery system in the 2014 race and can look back with pride how their car, then called the Hulamin-iKlwa, still proved fast enough to set two records.
With a bit of luck, Woods said the new car should be good enough for a top 10 position, using a 2kW Mitsuba hub wheel, 20 kg of small Panasonic lithium batteries which they packed “just like Tesla does” and special solar car wheels from Schwalbe, pumped to eight bar.
Co-team manager Dr Clint Bemont said the new solar car is 250 kg lighter than iKlwa, thanks to new aluminium sheets from Hulamin in Pietermaritzburg, and thanked the aluminium giant for its vision to enter the World Solar Challenge.
Hulamin group marketing communications manager Nomaswazi Kanyile said aluminium was both durable and light enough to meet any car’s needs, which is why it is used in from Ford’ new F250 pick-up to Tesla cars’ electric cars and of course, the Hulamin solar car.
This year’s Bridgestone World Solar Challenge will be held in Australia from October to 18 to 25. The teams will race 3000 kilometres across Australia, starting at Darwin and ending at Adelaide.
Veale admits the UKZN team will be very much the underdogs Down Under, but she is confident they can place seventh in the world, despite having a team that is half the size and a budget that is up to 100 times smaller than that of the top ten university teams.
“The car has already shown its speed, we’ve made it even lighter and we’ve kept part of the original team, all of which place us in a strong position to compete,” Veale said.
Seen here with Veale and her nephew in the background is the author in the first solar car from Africa that will race in the biennial World Solar Challenge across Australia in October. He won't be able to drive, as the weight limit of the driver behind the DIY steering wheel is only 80kg.
