General Discussions

[DJC]

The whole battery for a Solar Challenge car is limited to 21kg.

A small EV like a Tesla S weighs 2200kg and the battery is about 600kg alone, batteries for a 4WD EV are likely to be twice the weight, power/capacity basically scales with weight.

A Tesla probably consumes more power than a Solar Challenger just by booting the cars computer!

The NT is selected for the Solar Challenge due to the long straight mostly level roads and plenty of sun, years ago I watched a talk by one of the competitors and he mentioned that the car took kilometres to gradually accelerate to full cruising speed because the motors are so low power. During testing he mentioned someone loaded the bearings with the wrong type of grease, they used steering column grease instead of the special wheel bearing grease, and it destroyed the whole vehicles performance. I suppose that is a side effect of performance designed around low friction and low aerodynamic packaging.

You do realise that the solar challenge route is from Darwin to Adelaide and there are plenty of steep grades on the route.  Bad weather has played a role in several challenges with vehicle being blown off the road and running out of power because of overcast conditions.

The Cruiser Class vehicles have no limits on battery size and are permitted to use non-solar sources for charging.  They must complete a 1,000km stage before recharging from non-solar sources.