It’s time again to start getting excited for the World Solar Challenge, where teams from some thirty countries compete in a mad six-day dash across nearly 2,000 miles of Australian outback in the world’s fastest solar-powered cars.
The World Solar Challenge isn’t just a race. It’s also a survival course. The racers start each morning at 8 a.m., and don’t stop until 5 p.m. They then have to camp at the exact spot they stopped.
If you’re a better by nature (and this is as good a competition to bet on as anything) then you might want to play it safe and put your money on the Nuon Solar Team, made up of students from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Besides winning the competition for the past five years in a row, they also have the coolest-looking car.
To ensure that their hog, the Nuna5, will once again be unbeatable, all fourteen members of the Nuon Solar Team skipped school for the past year to work on its construction.
“Nuna5 has really become our baby,” says Rein van den Eijnde, the team leader. “After all the work we have put in, we are now very happy and proud to be able to present it to the outside world. We really can’t wait to start driving Nuna. After all, the car may look great, but what it’s all about is racing and winning. We feel like a real Formula 1 team and just the thought of the start sets the pulse racing. The engine may be silent, but you could almost swear you can hear it throbbing on the starting grid!”
The car weighs some 350 lbs. As one of the drivers observed, ‘It’s strange to think I’ll be driving a car that is only about twice my own weight. You hardly ever see such lightweight cars on the roads.’
But during the race across Australia, competitors will drive among all the others cars and trucks on the road, offering many opportunities for Mad Max-style road wars.
Footage from the unveiling of the Nuna5 can be seen above.
[Via: Eco Times]
