| The SA Consortium team's campsite. |
| Some of the SA Consortium team (Aust)
settling down to dinner outside Alice Springs. |
| End of day maintenance work on a solar
car near Alice Springs. Seen here is the rear wheel. |
| This solar car tyre was damaged at high
speed. The car suffered no stability problems or damage other than to the
tyre itself. These tyres are specially designed for solar cars and have
low rolling resistance and wide contact area on the road. The technical
advances introduced in these tyres are slowly making their way into everyday
car tyres. |
| The driver's seat in Cascade Cruiser.
It is arguably one of the more comfortable driver's seats in the race. |
| Cascade Cruiser car showing the repairs
to the damage they sustained at Darwin during the start of the race. The
plywood board replaces the damaged carbon fibre composite plate. Cascade
Cruiser took 4 hours to effect the repair and re-enter the race. At the
end of day 3 they made up a lot of lost ground to reach 13th position just
north of Alice Springs. |
| Tokai car being worked on at the end of
the day's racing just outside Alice Springs. Shown here is the in-wheel
electric motor. On Tokai it is on the rear wheel. Most cars have only one
motor and many cars have only 3 wheels - usually 2 at the front and one
rear which is often the motor wheel. |
| Tokai team pointing their array towards
the setting sun in order to charge their batteries at the end of the day. |
| Tokai team starting the generator to provide
electric power for power tools as well as general lighting for the nights
camp. |
| Tokai team setting up camp at day's end.
Each team member often has many duties to perform apart from maintaining
the solar car - pitching tents, cooking, washing up, etc. |
| Helios team charging their batteries with
the array at the end of the 3rd day. They are about 100kms north of Alice
Springs. |
| Helios car - where they plug the power
cable from the array into the batteries. |
| Tamagawa Super Genbow car at Alice Springs
Media Stop. This is a two person car. Solar cars built as 2-seaters can
have a larger array area than single seater cars. The disadvantage is the
extra space needed and the weight of the passenger. Two-seater cars are
not as popular as single-seaters. The person in front is the driver and
behind him (and facing towards the rear of the car) is the "passenger". |
| Queens Uni car arriving at the Alice Springs
Media Stop. They were the first car in. |
