The University of Toronto’s Blue Sky Solar Racing team finished in the top 10 of the 2013 World Solar Challenge today. The B-7 car finished eighth, on the sixth day of the race. Cars that race in the challenge must run exclusively on solar power.
The challenge is a multi-day race spanning across 3000 kilometres of the Australian Outback, with this year’s edition featuring 43 teams from 23 different countries.
Jane Liu tests the B-7’s mechanical system on the U of T campus. PHOTO COURTESY BLUE SKY SOLAR RACING
The Nuon Solar team from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands placed first in the challenge; Nuon finished on the fifth day of racing, along with the second-place Tokai University team from Japan.
The World Solar Challenge takes place every two years. Blue Sky competes in the Challenger class, which the organization describes as “elite.” Cars in the Challenger class depart from Darwin, Australia on the first day of the race, and travel as far as they can until 5 pm, at which time they must stop — wherever they happen to be — and make camp until the next day. They then travel on from that point the next day.
Blue Sky is a student-run initiative and a levy group at the University of Toronto. The team is mostly comprised of upper-year engineering students, though all students are free to participate. The club was founded in 1996.
