University of Michigan students win a solar car race

The University of Michigan’s student-run solar car team took home the gold at the final 2024 Electrek American Solar Challenge, covering 2,095.5 miles (3,372 km) at 37.51 mph (60.3 km per hours) for 8 days. First place came after a car roll on day one of the qualifying round damaged the engine, nearly knocking the team out of the competition.

The Electrek American Solar Challenge 2024 attracted more than 30 student-run teams from the US and Canada to the eight-day competition that began on July 20 in Nashville, Tennessee and ended on July 27 in Casper, Wyoming. The primary route has a total of 1,562.2 miles to complete, plus seven optional loops for teams to earn additional points. Vehicles must have an average speed of at least 35 km/h for the event.

This year’s winner in the single-passenger vehicle class is the University of Michigan student team with their Astrum solar car. He covered 2,095.5 miles (3,372 km) at an average speed of 37.51 mph (60.3 km per hour), followed by the Canadian École de techno supérieure team at 2,004.5 miles, and at third place is the Illinois State University solar car team with 1504.3 miles.

This was said by the spokesperson of the winning team pv magazine that the team’s biggest technical challenge came during the qualifying race after an engine failure on day two, the result of damage sustained when the car rolled the day before. It was replaced in time and the team completed the qualifying rounds.

Astrum is a carbon fiber monohull design with 3 wheels and a mandatory roll bar of 5 m * 1.2 m * 1.0 m. It houses a 20 kg lithium-ion battery. The 2 kW motor from Japan’s Mitsuba is powered by a 4 m² solar panel with Maxeon Sunpower Gen 3 and Gen 7 solar cells.

The team will take Astrum to the next Bridgestone World Solar Challenge in Australia in 2025. Last year it finished in fourth place, just behind the student teams from Belgium’s University of Leuven, the Dutch Team Twente and the British Brunel.