The Sunswift project of the University of New South Wales, Australia, exists to provide university students with a multi-disciplinary engineering challenge, enhancing the true educational value of their degree with a unique hands-on real-world experience of creating solar–electric hybrid vehicles. The design and development of the low-drag ‘solar supercar’ Sunswift eVe car are described here, detailing the student-led process from initial concept sketches to the completed performance vehicle. eVe was designed to demonstrate the potential of effective solar integration into a practical passenger-carrying vehicle. It is a two-seater vehicle with an on-body solar array area of 4 m2 and a battery capacity of 16 kW h, which is capable of sustained speeds over 130 km/h and a single-charge range of over 800 km. Carbon fiber was used extensively, and the components were almost all designed, built, and tested by students with industry and academic mentorship. The eVe project was initiated in mid-2012, and the car competed in the 2013 World Solar Challenge, taking class line honours. It subsequently set a Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile land speed record in 2014 for the fastest average speed of an electric vehicle over 500 km; it is now the team’s intent to develop the car to road-legal status.
The Sunswift Solar Car project has been running at UNSW Australia in Sydney for 20 years as of 2015. It is an entirely student-run endeavour which revolves around the design and development of a solar/electric vehicle nominally designed to compete in the World Solar Challenge rally from Darwin to Adelaide every 2 years. The student cohort is drawn from a range of schools, disciplines and backgrounds, and the team has been increasingly successful and high-profile particularly in its second decade. The excellent level of hands-on training that the project provides to students is not rewarded with academic credit yet many of the alumni credit the project with launching their careers and ambitions. The team's world recordbreaking latest vehicle, eVe, is the fifth constructed and presents a radical departure from previous cars in that it carries a passenger in a conventional layout and is based around a road-going sports car. The team is currently working to meet road registration standards, making it the most complex vehicle yet. However, the issues of high costs, safety concerns, ensuring representative student participation, and student workload management present ongoing challenges which must be met if the project is to continue its run of success.
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