The Hindu : New Delhi News : Efforts on to take solar car for US contest

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 11, 2007
ePaper

New Delhi

New Delhi

Efforts on to take solar car for US contest

Staff Reporter

Missed the world challenge due to a fund shortage

NEW DELHI: Students of Delhi College of Engineering who designed a solar car to take part in the “World Solar Challenge-2007” in October this year had to miss the event because of a shortage of funds.

However, that has not dampened the spirits of the 10-member team that developed the four-metre-long car as it is now hoping to take part in the “American Solar Challenge” scheduled to take place in the US in July next year.

“But all that is still tentative. We want the car to be sent to the American Solar Challenge. But there are a lot of factors that have to be taken into consideration. We developed the car according to the rules of the World Solar Challenge, now it will have to be modified according to the rules of the new contest,” says Ankur Sharma, Head of the Indian Solar Car project at DCE.

The fabrication cost of Rs.13. 82 lakh for the red metallic car was sponsored by the Union Ministry for New and Renewable Energy .

“Our car is sustainable on Indian roads as it runs on solar energy. It has a good battery backup for cloudy skies and nights. It is also equipped with regenerative braking in which five per cent of the energy dissipated during braking is fed back into the batteries. It can maintain a speed of 40-50 km per hour. Once charged, the batteries can drive up to 100 km,” explains Ankur.

“The car can be reversed and performs all necessary functions. It has a dual braking system, zero running cost, and causes no noise. The car has a cockpit that allows the driver to have vision in all directions. We may expect solar cars to arrive on Indian roads in about 8-10 years and our car being the first, will be the mother of all such cars,” claims Ankur.

The car uses a 672-watt solar panel specially manufactured by Central Electronics Limited.

New team

The car, which was designed by students from different branches of engineering, will now need a new team to carry out further changes.

“Most of the people in our team were studying in the third year then, so they obviously have other priorities now. We will have to get a new team who are capable of bearing their travelling cost as we do not want to face the problem of funds yet again. Also, next time round we plan to ship the car instead of sending it by air to cut down on costs,” says Ankur.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail