While COVID put the brakes on this year’s outback solar car race, the ANU Solar Racing Team will virtually launch their design this week.
The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge displays human endeavour through amazing technical innovation from some of the world’s brightest young minds.
The biennial competition brings teams from all over the globe to Australia to build and then race solar-powered vehicles through the outback from Darwin all the way to Adelaide.
At a total distance of 3022km, the heroic journey usually attracts over 40 teams from around 30 different countries, including students from prestigious universities such as Cambridge, Stanford and Canberra’ own Australian National University.
While COVID restrictions put the brakes on this year’s race, a virtual celebration of teamwork and technology will allow the ANU students an opportunity to showcase their hard work tomorrow.
The business lead for the ANU Solar Racing Team, David Lim, said the team started out confident they were going to be able to drive in some capacity, and work was well underway before the cancellation.
“We made a mad dash to put together an event here in Canberra after the Bridgestone Challenge was cancelled but unfortunately due to the extension of the ACT lockdown, we had to cancel that also,” Mr Lim said.
“The lockdown has made it really difficult and quite amusing to try and put a car together while being in different houses, but next Wednesday we’ll be doing a virtual car unveiling for our sponsors and showing them the virtual car design.”
Mr Lim is hoping the team will soon be able to head to Wakefield Park to test drive their car, as well as complete the tour across Canberra, but at the moment it’s just not feasible.
The design of the car is aerodynamic with a super sleek shape and solar cells that took some trial and error to make them perfect, the aim to minimise the space required.
After exploring many design ideas, he said the team settled on their current one, which they are excited to be showing virtually.
“We couldn’t have done the work without the support of our sponsors – Spirit Super has been with us since our first race, Sydney Composites have been great, and Tindo Solar in Adelaide offered their facilities to us for over a week so the students could learn how to work with solar power. We couldn’t have done it without them,” Mr Lim said.
“When lockdown happened, the team had to take home what they could and we’ve been doing little projects at home to get ready to assemble the car, but we haven’t been able to just yet.”
He said being on the team is fantastic for his future career as it’s equipped him with skills that are not taught within a traditional university environment.
His business, leadership, communication and management skills have improved and he said it shows employers you’re passionate and willing to get out and dedicate your time to projects you consider important.
The virtual showing of the ANU’s Solar Racing car design will be on Wednesday 6 October 6pm with a speech from Spirit Super, and stories and questions from the team.
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