Posted by ketyung
on Jan/17/2008
at 11:07 pm
The space-age looking vehicle shown to you here is one of the greatest efforts by the Solar Car team of University of Michigan. It’s called Continuum, is on display at the Detroit Auto Show. The Continuum is a pretty expensive vehicle, which has couple of big names behind as the sponsors including General Motors, Ford, Michelin and Motorola.
The solar cars by the team have evolved through a few versions. Which the previous version needed the driver in a laying-down position for improved aerodynamics and reduced drag to achieve high speed.
Whereas the latest version, the Continuum is having the driver in the sitting position and also the size of the solar cells has been reduced. The current version is now equipped with a rather clever solar energy collecting system. The system allows sunlight to be concentrated on special high yield solar cells using parabolic mirrors. And it still can achieve speeds upwards of 90mph.
The version displayed at the show seems to be a miniature version, which they had it to go for a test run in wind tunnels, to measure its performance instead of using the full-sized version. The smaller versions are to ensure the full size car is already well streamlined before it gets assembled. A great piece of work by University students!
Source [OhGizmo]
Continuum,University of Michigan,solar car,Solar Car team
Technorati Tags: Continuum, University of Michigan, solar car, Solar Car team
January 18th, 2008 at 1:26 am
[...] TechChee [...]
January 18th, 2008 at 6:00 am
[...] TechChee Social Bookmark ThisBlogmarks Buddymarks CiteUlike Connotea del.icio.us Digg it Earthlink Furl [...]
February 2nd, 2008 at 5:35 am
Car looks fantastic, solar power could be a good wa to go, but will we ever get it to the point where familys are able to buy them. Seems they only ever cater for single drivers.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:57 am
You should check out the car that Cal State LA created about 6 yrs ago. It won the race and was built WITHOUT the help
Ford/GM/ or any big guys except Mattel.
September 7th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
[...] Solar-powered vehicles just take power from the sun, which is always there above us. But the downside is it produces extremely slow speed, which human will never get used to. Now here comes a solar-powered taxi, which is the initiative of a Swiss “adventurer” Louis Palmer, who is gonna drive this solar-powered cab at very low speed to circle the globe. The solar-powered Taxi is in golf cart size, three wheeled and has its style ripped from the 80’s. [...]
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:28 am
[...] to be generated by vibrations, wind and also the sun, which the University of Michigan has some achievement in the past. Besides, the COM-BAT project is also to help existing technologies to look into [...]