In this year biennial World Solar Challenge competition, 46 teams from 25 countries are expected to lead solar cars across nearly 1,00 miles across Australia Outback. This means that participants must travel to Darwin which is in the north of Australia to Adelaide is South Australia. There are three categories of the competition, Challenger Class, Class Cruiser class and Adventure. However, most participants will compete in the Challenger and Cruiser class.
In the Challenger class, participants will normally have smaller vehicles that carries the driver and are timed only once during the competition. In addition, they are allowed to charge their car once while the rest of the trip, they will have to rely on the sun to recharge their vehicle.
In the Cruiser class, participants will normally larger vehicles because it carries a driver and a passenger. They are timed twice throughout the competition. A step is between Darwin and Alice Springs and the other step is between Alice Springs and Adelaide. Unlike the Challenger class, participants in this category are able to recharge their batteries twice. Once before the competition begins as the other during the halfway while the rest of the trip, they are necessary to get the power of the sun.
It seems that most of the teams taking part in the competition of the year, took part in the previous competition, but they bring a better version of vehicles previous. Stanford team, for example, in 2013, they won four Challenger place in the class and they received the "Best Undergraduate team in the world". This year, the team brings a newly designed Arctan promised to be able to run on an improved solar technology but in a smaller design.
Nuon Solar Team is another example. The team that comes from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands took part in the Challenger class. This year, they bring Nuna 8, which is designed to have a lighter weight because they use 3D printing to improve speed. Tokai University is another challenger in the same class. The team won second place in 2013 competition and this year, they bring a slimmer version of the previous version, which they brought to the previous competition.
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