Vehicle Design
Solar cars combine technology used in the aerospace, bicycle, alternative energy and automotive industries. Unlike most race cars, solar cars are designed with severe energy constraints imposed by the race regulations. These rules limit the energy used to only that collected from solar radiation, albeit starting with a fully charged battery pack. Some vehicle classes also allow human power input. As a result optimizing the design to account for aerodynamic drag, vehicle weight, rolling resistance and electrical efficiency are paramount.
A usual design for today's successful vehicles is a small canopy in the middle of a curved wing-like array, entirely covered in cells, with 3 wheels. Before, the cockroach style with a smooth nose fairing into the panel was more successful. At lower speeds, with less powerful arrays, other configurations are viable and easier to construct, e.g. covering available surfaces of existing electric vehicles with solar cells or fastening solar canopies above them.
Read more about this topic: Solar Car Races
Famous quotes containing the words vehicle and/or design:
“How strange a vehicle it is, coming down unchanged from times of old romance, and so characteristically black, the way no other thing is black except a coffin—a vehicle evoking lawless adventures in the plashing stillness of night, and still more strongly evoking death itself, the bier, the dark obsequies, the last silent journey!”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)