Thanks Genasun and EMA Services!

Now that things have settled down a bit and Chopper is back in Boston, we would like to thank Genasun and EMA Services for all the invaluable help they gave us in constructing our battery pack.

First, a huge thanks to Genasun! Alex MeVay and Alexander Hayman of Genasun ( also alums of the team) designed our pack and battery protection system. They were also kind enough to offer us a place to construct the pack as well, and we spent several long days putting together all the batteries, PCBs, and wire cabling. Check out some pictures from the assembly party below!

David screws hardware into some of the PCBs 

 Kelly checks the alignment of the battery tabs before placing the top PCB 

Close-up of the batteries

Julia cuts zip ties holding the two PCB panels together. Almost done!

And of course, another huge thanks to EMA Services. who assembled our BMS boards free of charge. Thanks for helping us out, even during your vacation time!

The team is ready to get started designing again, and we look forward to working with Genasun and EMA Services, as well as all our other sponsors, for our next build cycle. Keep checking the blog, as we'll be posting updates about our progress. 

More Race Photos

A couple more race photos! Photo credit: Simon Calcutt (our awesome British Electrical Engineer).  Simon had worked with the team when he had been at MIT as an exchange student from Cambridge University. It was wonderful to have him join us in Australia this year.

The team at the finish line: Victoria Square in Adelaide.

Chopper in the Australian outback. 

Epic sunset picture.

Chopper + Trailer under the night sky.

Driving through the rain. Rain-X and Silicone sealant go a long way.

Kelly cruising along.

Team paparazzi taking pictures of our lead car followed by the solar car and chase. 

Our not-so-secret secret...

So if you've been looking closely at some of the pictures we've posted, you may have noticed something unusual...

...our red tires!

It's about time we disclose our secret as rumours have been buzzing around WSC about these.

Adam is interviewed by Japanese TV.

These are custom-made solid polyurethane tires mounted on specially-machined anodized aluminium wheels. Dimensions are: 1 3/8” x 20 3/4”. We have been working all summer with our wonderful and enthusiastic sponsors HSMWorks, Spracher Engineering, and TWT Group to develop these new solar car tires . Special thanks to Anthony Graves, Aidan Bradley, and Bill Spracher for all their hard work with making these possible.

They have a low rolling resistance and thus help make our car highly efficient. We've been test driving them around and so far the numbers are looking good. This morning they passed dynamic scrutineering and we ran our time trial on these.

After the race we plan to continue working with Spracher and TWT Group to further develop these with the hopes of producing a new solar car tire for the open market. Look to see more of these in future races!

[Post-Race Edit]:  As you can read in later blog posts we ended up not running the full race on these tires. We swapped them out Day 1 for moped tires. There were a couple issues with these tires causing them to fail. We will continue testing and developing these over the next couple months to resolve the issue. Stay tuned.