Sun powered EV sets record at Wensleydale

AN electric and sun powered vehicle designed and built by students claimed a Guinness World Record by travelling 1000km on a single charge in under 12 hours on the Surf Coast last weekend.

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) team achieved the record with just eight minutes to spare in an effort that saw the Sunswift 7 car average 85kmh around the Australian Automotive Research Centre (AARC) track in Wensleydale on Saturday (December 17).

The milestone secured the Sunswift Racing team the official record for the ‘Fastest EV over 1000km on a single charge’, nudging out a previous unofficial trial from Mercedes according to team principal Professor Richard Hopkins.

Professor Hopkins won four F1 world titles as Head of Operations at Red Bull, but ranked the latest record just as high.

“This is amazing, incredible. Wow. The whole year has been leading to this point and it hasn’t been plain sailing. To be honest, we had our doubts whether we were going to be able to achieve it,” he said.

“Let’s remember, these are not the best-paid professional car makers in Stuttgart working for Mercedes.

This is a bunch of very smart amateurs who have taken all the ingredients and put it together in a brilliant way.

“So to come here and do what we set out to do is just the most incredible feeling. I’m sure those sentiments are shared amongst the whole team.”

Team Manager Andrea Holden said she was delighted the car’s performance given it went into production as the country was going into lockdown.

“There was a lot of difficult moments…it’s been so rewarding to see the whole team come together and make so much progress and get us to this amazing point,” she said.

“It feels very weird to think that we’ve helped to make something that’s the best in the entire world.”

Weighing in at 500kg the Sunswift 7 is around one quarter of a Tesla and is the latest solar-powered vehicle from UNSW that produced its first in 1996.

The record attempt was nearly scuttled when a battery management issue on the car caused it to come to a complete stop and the 14 minutes and 52 second time it took the pit team to remedy the problem was just 8 seconds shy of the events rule that it could not be stationary for more than 15 minutes at a time.

The only other stops made by the car was for a tyre change due to a puncture and a driver swap every few hours.