U of C solar car gaining on the competition in road race

Tuesday is day three of the 1,700-km road race in the 2010 American Solar Challenge and the U of C’s Schulich Axiom - the only Canadian solar car in the competition - is steadily climbing towards the top spot.

The U of C finished the closed track qualifier in sixth place then moved to fifth place Sunday as the race from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Chicago, Illinois got underway. The U of C gained another spot Monday, arriving at the checkpoint in Topeka, Kansas in fourth place. The other top teams are University of Michigan, University of Minnesota and Bochum University of Applied Sciences in Germany.

“This is the stage where the engineering and craftsmanship really count. If you don’t have a durable car, all kinds of things start to go wrong. The Schulich Axiom is just purring along rock solid at highway speeds,” says Lynne Cowe Falls, director of students at the Schulich School of Engineering. Cowe Falls is travelling with the team and remarks the only problems on the highway have been a flat tire and a bout of heavy rain.

Day three takes the team to a checkpoint in Jefferson City, Missouri. The race ends Saturday in Naperville, Illinois, just outside Chicago.

Fifty U of C students - the majority from the Schulich School of Engineering - spent nearly two years planning, designing and building the Schulich Axiom.

The U of C team placed sixth overall in the 2008 North American Solar Challenge when it raced its last car, Schulich 1, from Dallas to Calgary. The Schulich Axiom has a radically new design: it’s lighter, more energy efficient and easier to handle than Schulich 1 and it cost $100,000 less. The Schulich Axiom has nearly 2,000 solar cells and has reached speeds of more than 120 km/h.