A team from the University of Michigan shined – quite literally – in the 2012 American Solar Challenge, a sun-powered race the school won for the fourth consecutive year.
The U-M team led the race by as much as 10 hours, going into the final stretch of the 8-day event, which began in Syracuse, New York and wrapped up in St. Paul, Minnesota. In all, the university has claimed victory seven times since the American Solar Challenge was first launched in 1990.
The school’s solar-powered car, dubbed Quantum, took 45 hours of actual driving to make the journey, using the energy from the sun to average just under 40 miles per hour. The vehicle was a modified version of the solar racer that helped the school win third place during the World Solar Challenge in Australia last year.
“It is exciting and a relief,” said Ryan Mazur, the Michigan team’s crew chief and a recent electrical engineering graduate. “We have proven that Quantum is a great car and made all our alumni proud.”
It looked to be as perfect conditions as possible going into the race, with bright sunshine blanketing most of the route with record temperatures and cloudless skies. The Michigan team looked to have at least a 10-hour lead going into the final day of facing, but it needed several pit stops during the final leg as intense storms swept through the Midwest over the weekend.
“While our overall strategy stayed mostly the same, we definitely had to make some adjustments to adverse weather conditions,” U-Michigan mechanical engineering student and team strategist A.J. Trublowski told the Associated Press.
Under ideal conditions some of the vehicles made 50 mph or more, a significant improvement from the speeds posted during earlier years of the race.
In all, 18 teams competed in the 2012 American Solar Challenge, an annual event designed to promote alternative energy and explore the possibilities of solar power, in particular.
An entry from Iowa State University came in second, with Illinois’ Principia College taking third.
