7words

June 18th, 2013 at 11:08 PM ^

Saw a thing about the 2011 car on the B1G Network about a week ago.  They seemed like they were pretty disappointed to get 2nd in the race last time.  Also if i remember correctly they were the only team (at least the only on of the top teams)  that was made up of students and not filled with professionals with much more experience.  Pretty cool either way.  Love the winged helmet look on the car they had on the show too. 

santy

June 18th, 2013 at 11:23 PM ^

Got 3rd in 2011. Dutch team Nuon is made out of grad students who take the whole year off to do Solar Car, Japanese team Tokai is run by the profs with the students running doing their bidding. Still no one from mMichigan is gonna use this as an excuse for anything less than victory

MichiganManOf1961

June 18th, 2013 at 11:31 PM ^

Amateur poster?  Bro... you have 4,870 points.  That's like Jenna Jameson calling herself a virgin.

Awesome story, looks like UM has a good chance to win it with the new innovations.  Does anyone know how much ground we have to make up from past years?  Were they beaten by minutes, hours, or days?

M-Dog

June 18th, 2013 at 11:36 PM ^

Hour and a half to Japan I believe, about an hour to the Dutch.  They had an issue with the fairing (wheel cover) breaking loose and creating wind resistance.  They lost valuable time fixing it.  They were within minutes of Japan and ahead of the Dutch when it happened.  I was following it live on the Solar Car site.

Seth

June 19th, 2013 at 6:30 AM ^

I heard there's been a shift in the rules -- they're trying to make it less of a sport and get back to original spirit of an engineering competition.

I also heard one of the big reasons Michigan's team has been so good in the last few years was they had like the top meteorology guy in the country. This was coming from his mother, however, so I may need a second source on that.

saveferris

June 19th, 2013 at 8:16 AM ^

You can't have a solar car team thread without checking up on how our brethren in East Lansing are faring in their vehicle development program....

I give you Brasidius III, MSU's third generation solar vehicle, which is a really nice try.  Coming soon, MSU's next generation vehicle which they are dubbing Leonidas.

 

Njia

June 19th, 2013 at 8:54 AM ^

Is PepsiCo going to sponsor the car? Because then it would be called the "Pepsi Generation".

/rimshot

#okaynotthatfunny

#showingmyage

gbdub

June 19th, 2013 at 12:04 PM ^

Because I failed to talk them into naming it Dilithium.



But in any case, the -um endings were actually a sort of accidental tradition that goes back only to 2003 (Spectrum, Momentum, Continuum, Infinium, and Quantum). But the first cars were Sunrunner, Maize and Blue, Solar Vision, Wolverine, Maize Blaze, and M-Pulse.



Wearing race #2 is also an accidental tradition not followed by all the early teams but is now effectively permanent.

lolapaluuza

May 14th, 2021 at 11:48 AM ^

This is a really promising project. I think that solar energy will be more widespread and accessible to everyone in the near future. I myself recently bought a portable solar panels and use them mainly on hikes. I think that it will be useful for you to read more detailed information about such devices.