As the University of New South Wales students await the ratification of their recent Guinness World Record attempt for the fastest solar electric car over a distance of 1,000 km (620 miles), let’s take a look at the background.
The Sunswift 7 car was the culmination of thousands of hours of work by a team of UNSW students over an 18-month period during the early dangers of COVID-19 and associated lockdowns.
Practice professor Richard Hopkins, Sunswift team principal, is immensely proud of all the students have accomplished to get the car onto the track. But Prof. Hopkins, formerly Head of Operations of the Red Bull Racing Formula One team, was able to draw on his experience at the highest levels of motorsport to guide the team through the challenges.
“This is the result of the hard work of 50 undergraduate students who are very dedicated, very focused and very talented,” he said. “They were given the freedom to create. The criterion was simple: build a car with solar energy and a battery. I had very little influence over what they wanted to do in there – I just wanted them to make the best technical decisions.
“Let’s not forget that these are not the highest paid professional car manufacturers in Stuttgart who work for Mercedes. This is a bunch of very clever amateurs who have taken all the ingredients and put them together brilliantly.”
Sunswift solar electric car engineering team. Photo courtesy of UNSW Sydney/Richard Freeman.
Ironically, the team manager, mechanical engineering student Andrea Holden, bears the same name as Australia’s iconic car nameplate.
The Tesla Model S was used as a benchmark. Sunswift 7 weighs 500 kg (1102 lb), about a quarter of the weight of a Model S. It is so efficient that it will complete the 1000 km world record attempt on just a single charge of its solar-powered battery with a drag coefficient of 0.095 – compare that to the Tesla’s 0.208.
Chief designer Ben Heina went back to the drawing board 57 times before he was satisfied with the car’s aerodynamics, as well as the high performance in converting energy from the solar cells to the battery, the efficiency of the engines and the entire propulsion chain, plus incredibly low rolling resistance.
The weight loss was achieved by removing a large number of safety features and also the air conditioning system. Not the most comfortable ride I’m sure.
“And if you have an efficient car, you don’t need a lot of battery to run the whole car,” Hopkins noted. “What we’re really doing with Sunswift is a feasibility study. It is an exercise to show what is possible.” It’s great to see many university teams compete with their electric offerings.
UNSW Sunswift solar electric car.
Robin Denholm, UNSW alumna and Tesla president, saw firsthand what is possible when she visited the Sunswift team, then told the students what a great job they thought they were doing. So yes, I think Elon may be aware of all the talent down under!
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