Delft University is the Brawn GP of solar-car racing, an outfit so singularly successful that it has won the World Solar Challenge four times in a row. The Dutch team is back with its newest car, Nuna 5, and has its sights set on a fifth title when the checkered flag drops later this year.
The Nuon Solar Team has its work cut out for it once Nuna 5 arrives Down Under. The race is more than 1,800 miles long (3,000 km to be exact) and runs between Adelaide and Darwin, directly through the Australian desert. The last race, in 2007, drew 57 teams from 17 countries.
It's like Mad Max, but without all the leather or the violent fight for gasoline.
Delft won the Solar Challenge last time around, covering the distance in 33 hours flat at an average speed of 56.46 mph.
It's a pretty car the Nuna 5, no two ways about that. It looks like a pool table that's been through the Pininfarina wind tunnel, but the real beauty is more than skin deep. The tech is, as one would expect, as gorgeous to the mind as the shape is to the eye.
For starters, the high-tech, low-rolling-resistance tires used in years past are out, and regular street tires are in thanks to a rules change. This means more drag, which means lower overall efficiency, which means the teams have to work harder to maximize range. Still, the team says Nuna 5 offers 10 times less rolling resistance than your typical family car.
The Nuna 5 is not quite 16 feet long and just under 3 feet tall. Like it's predecessor, Nuna 4, it is covered in 6 square meters -- about 65 square feet -- of gallium-arsenide photovoltaic cells. There are 2,120 of them in all. Naturally there is a lithium-polymer battery -- though the team didn't disclose how big it is -- to store energy collected by the PV cells. It also has the nifty performance advantage of supplying an extra bit of current for boosts in speed when needed, sort like the "push to pass" kinetic energy recovery systems Formula 1 has been experimenting with.
The power flows to a hub-mounted motor that the team says is 97 percent efficient, and the car is brought to a halt with carbon-ceramic disc brakes and regenerative braking.
The Nuna 4 weighed in at a feather-weight 418 pounds, but that seems positively tanklike compared to Nuna 5's all-up weight of 352 pounds. Tell us that Colin Chapman wouldn't be impressed by that? Hell, Chapman would probably be impressed by the whole thing.
Photos: Nuon Solar Team
*Hat tip to Inhabitat.com
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