A professor in Wales is developing a solar car that will be capable of 100 mph, costs less than $16,000 and delivers maximum thrills with zero emissions.
Dr. Graham Sparey-Taylor of Wrexham University is working with a team of students and researchers on NOSGwawrII, the team's entry into next year's North American Solar Challenge from Texas to Alberta. The car will be a follow-up to his Gwawr Cymru (it means Welsh Dawn) solar car that reached 60 mph while competing in the 2007 Panasonic World Solar Challenge in Australia.
While going green is certainly a priority for Sparey-Taylor, he says going fast is just as important. "On a schools visit recently, one school boy said, 'You're not saving the planet, you're saving speed!' Which, when we think about it is true," he told Autopia. "Most of us like to go fast, and the feeling of going fast with no engine sound is, to say the least, odd."
We imagine it's even odder in a flat, 465 lb. car that's covered in solar panels.
While Sparey-Taylor said he'd be ready to announce more details in September, he did tell us the car would feature "new, lightweight" lead acid batteries and have a choice of two drivetrains. For "efficiency drive," a Lemco 11kW 72 volt DC motor would suffice. For high speed runs, however, Sparey-Taylor would use a 35 kW AC motor system mated to a Quaife-style differential.
Sparey-Taylor, whose interest in solar cars began in part after an engineering challenge from his fellow professors at a coffee shop in Cardiff, estimated that NOSGwawrII could be built by January and racing on North American roads as soon as he can find the sponsors to pay £10,000 to build it and ship it across the pond. "We at team Gwawr are trying to design first an electric car and second a solar car, and think £10K for what is in affect a kit car, is actually not that economical. Gwawr cost £8K."
The professor is raising the cash by selling blocks of advertising on the car's exterior. "As of this morning we have five new partners together with our existing partners from Gwawr," Sparey-Taylor told Autopia. There's still space for more logos, and he's looking for another donor to pay the shipping costs.
Despite its low cost relative to production cars, Sparey-Taylor says that NOSGwawrII isn't feasible for mass production. Instead, the latest Gwawr will be a working research project for his Centre for Future and Hybrid Vehicle Technology. "Our focus is primarily sub-systems within vehicles to make gains within efficiency and sustainability," he told Autopia.
Sparey-Taylor already has a mockup built of the NOSGwawrII . According to the Wrexham Chronicle, the working model (shown above) is just large enough for Sparey-Taylor's six-year-old son to drive. We wonder what kind of poetry Dylan Thomas would have written with a child's solar car in Wales as inspiration.
Photo: Professor Graham Sparey-Taylor
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