Monday, September 14, 2015

WSC 2015 Updates: Monday Sept 14

We've got a Twitter set up at https://twitter.com/most_dece. Check here for a list of tweets from WSC2015 teams.

Let's see what's happened since last week:

Challenger Class

2: University of Michigan

Nothing new to report. Last update of "The car is on the ground" was a week ago.

Nuon has completed the drive north across the outback and is setting up their workspace in Darwin.

4: Antakari Solar Team

Still no news on this team's progress.

No updates from the team in the past week, as far as I know the car is still in transit.

7: MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team

No major updates. The team has made a blog post very briefly describing their trip to Ford's wind tunnel earlier in the summer. Their ship tracker shows their container ship on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, due to hit New Zealand on Sept 15th and presumably soon after to a port in Australia.

8: Punch Powertrain Solar Team

Some of the team members arrived in Adelaide mid-week, visited the Adelaide University team, and have completed the long drive to Darwin. More members have just arrived directly to Darwin.

9: Adelaide University Solar Racing Team

The team has posted an August newsletter (PDF warning). They have started test driving their car this week, which must be exciting for them - especially as this is their first car ever.

10: Tokai University Solar Car Team

No major updates from Tokai this week.

12: Cambridge University Eco Racing

CUER's team is hanging out in Sydney with WSU and Bochum waiting for their car to arrive - sounds like it's going to be any day now.

13: WSU Solar Car Project

WSU posted a quick August newsletter detailing some testing they've been doing on the car. They're keeping the finished car under wraps for a few more days - I believe they're scheduled to show it off on Tuesday.

14: UKZN Solar Car

No major updates - still no word on if the car has shipped. The team has been doing a daily series on different team members on their Facebook.

EDIT: ScientificGems has kindly pointed me at an article indicating that UKZN was planning to ship their car out at the end of July.

15: Team Solaris

Team Solaris participated in a solar car event in Morocco over the weekend with their old car, S7. S8 is still in transit to Oz.

16: Stanford Solar Car Project

No big updates from Stanford last week. They've also made a blog post about their wind tunnel testing earlier in the summer.

18: EcoPhoton Solar Team

No updates since last week.

21: Solar Team Twente

Most of the team is in Australia and they report that the car will arrive next week. The team has been posting a series of retrospective blog posts, as well as a post about their custom motors.

22: Siam Technology College

Siam has shipped STC-1.

23: MegaLux GAMF

MegaLux was packing their car at the start of last week.

25: Goko High School Solar Car Team

No updates in the past week.

26: Durham University Solar Car

No updates in the past week.

27: RVCE Solar Car Team

No updates on the car, but they have posted more sponsor thank-you notes to their Facebook this week.

30: Team Arrow

No major updates this week.

32: Principia Solar Car

No updates this week.

36: Anadolu Solar Team

No updates this week.

46: JU Solar Team

The team finished packing and shipped the car out late last week.

47: Nagoya Institute of Technology Solar Car Team

No updates this week.

51: KIT Solar Car Project

KIT posted a blog update last week. Google translate is a little rough, but it sounds like they're troubleshooting some issues with the car.

77: Blue Sky Solar Racing

No updates from Blue Sky this week. Their IndiGoGo for shipping the car that ended last week did not meet its funding goal, so I hope they manage to find other funds for shipping the car.

80: Beijing Institute of Technology

Still ???

82: Kookmin University Solar Car Team

Kookmin's car has shipped.

Cruiser Class

11: Hochschule Bochum SolarCar Projekt

Bochum's car has arrived in Sydney.

24: Istanbul Technical University Solar Car Team

No major updates - still no word on if the car has shipped.

28: SunSpec

No updates on the status of the car after reports of a fire in their workshop three weeks ago.

31: ITS Solar Car Racing Team

The team uploaded a new photo of the car - it sounds like they've "re-unveiled" the car for WSC 2015. It has a new paint job, and loses the fake chrome grill.

33: IVE Solar Car

No major updates - still no word on if the car has shipped.

35: University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project

The team is about to depart to Australia

38: Persian Gazelle Solar Car

(image source)
The team finally posted an update, unveiling their car on September 10th. Since it's the cruiser class, it has to at least be a two-seater, but dang that canopy is short - the rear seat passenger must straddle the driver up front. I'll bet they're planning to drive most of the race with just one occupant in the car - while the extra weight of a passenger (or two) was worth it in 2013, the new regs make hauling deadweight around a questionable proposition.  I honestly expected to see more cars like this in 2015.


40: Solar Team Eindhoven

Their car has arrived in in Australia and they're already set up in a workshop in Darwin. They've also posted a new vlog to Youtube.

43: Ardingly Solar Car

The team has been making a lot of posts to Facebook and Twitter, showing a high level of activity to get the car completed. In particular, a twitter post from Sept 10th implies that something is happening on the 25th. Official car unveiling? Shipping the car? It sounds like everything is coming down to the wire for these folks.

45: KGHM Lodz Solar Team

The Polish team started packing this week. They've also posted recordings of a bunch of local news stories to their Youtube.

75: UNSW Sunswift

Not too much to report; they're doing final preparations on the car.

88: Kogakuin University Solar Vehicle Project

No updates this week.

Adventure Class

6: PI Solar Car

No updates this week.

20: Houston Solar Race Team

The team has made a series of posts on their blog and Facebook about packing and final preparations on the car. They say that they will be shipping everything out on Wednesday.

34: Liberty Christian Solar Car Team

The team's car shipped a while ago, and the team tweeted that they'll be flying out around October 8th. Inspection starts on the 12th, so that doesn't leave a whole lot of time to debug issues with the car. Seawater exposure can really screw up solar car electronics...

42: TAFE SA Solar Spirit

No updates this week.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Most_Dece,

    Name is Keno. I'm assembling a team of former solar racers to help write blogs and cover WSC15, to help compensate a bit for the loss of SolarRacing.Org.

    Was wondering if you'd like to collaborate with us?

    My twitter is @kenomg1
    Or email you can email me on omm27@cam.ac.uk

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We started this blog up for the same reason - you can see we're kinda using the same format. I shot you an email.

      Delete