Source:- The PIE News Date: Mon 19 Dec 2022
UNSW engineering students earn provisional Guinness World Record as their Sunswift 7 becomes the fastest solar-powered race car
An Australian-made solar-powered race car has narrowly set a provisional Guinness World Record in a 1,000 kilometre race, claiming the title with just six minutes to spare. The Sunswift 7 vehicle, created by a team of University of New South Wales (UNSW) engineering students, is now on track to hold the record for the fastest electric car to travel more than 1,000 kilometres on a single charge. But the low-profile vehicle almost missed the finish line, with a battery management issue causing a 14-minute pit stop that almost cancelled the record attempt. The Sunswift 7, powered by a battery and solar panels on its roof and bonnet, completed 240 laps of Victoria's Australian Automotive Research Centre to complete the challenge, or the equivalent of driving further than Sydney to Melbourne.
The Sunswift 7 race car weighs about a quarter as much as a standard electric vehicle at 500kg, and boasts a low-profile body with a drag coefficient of just .095.
Sunswift team manager Andrea Holden said the win had been "validation of all the effort everyone in the team" put in after originally creating the vehicle for the biennial Bridgestone World Solar Challenge that was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
Professor Hopkins said the vehicle would not be "a production car of the future" due to cost and other practicalities, but said its design could provide valuable lessons to the design of future fuel-efficient vehicles.