By Sarah Spaugh From the middle of the Outback- hello everyone. I wish that I were writing this blog post as an exciting beginning of day update going into our third day of racing. Unfortunately I instead have to report that our team suffered a battery fire about 30 minutes outside of Darwin on Sunday…
By Maisam Pyarali Surrounded by a crowd of excited and slightly confused Aussies, Black Mamba embarked on her maiden voyage in Port Augusta earlier this week. This was the first of the many hours of Australian drive time the team hopes to get in before the race. After three full days of non-stop, cross-continent driving,…
By Maisam Pyarali Author’s Note: Hi, I’m Maisam. I was born and raised in beautiful Tanzania. I work with the Electrical and Embedded Code team and I’ll be keeping you guys updated with my race log these next couple weeks. I write my blogs by dictating them to my google assistant; she’s British, so blame…
By Sarah Spaugh Over the past weekend we were incredibly excited to present Black Mamba, our 2019 car, to the public for the first time. Huge thanks to all of our sponsors for helping make this car happen – we couldn’t have done it without you! It was great seeing a few of the sponsors…
By Sarah Spaugh Hello again from the depths of our garage! The team is 3 weeks into our summer break and fully running on Stanford time – which is to say that we started off a little behind, and deadlines are approaching, but the crew has been having a great time putting in the long…
By Sarah Spaugh Happy Monday! For readers not in tune with Stanford’s academic schedule, today is the first day of spring break, or as we call it at SSCP, Composites Week! VAIL shop manager Larry drove to Mount Vernon, WA to pick up our molds! Kenyon unloading The team had a crazy last couple weeks…
By Sarah Spaugh The team is excited to shake off a long period of radio silence and share that we’ve successfully wrapped up the aerodynamic design of our upcoming 2019 competition vehicle! Aero team members Sam Kim, Isabella Rios, Kathleen Miller & Julia Gordon, led by co-leads Jason Trinidad & Yuji Sugimoto, worked long hours…
By Kelsey Josund Crossing the finish line We made it! After six and a half harrowing days in a race with some of the worst weather in World Solar Challenge history, we have crossed the continent and made a successful top-ten finish. First control stop with all of the top 10 finishers present We started…
By Roman Decca The Stanford Solar Car team has arrived in Australia and our car finally cleared customs & quarantine yesterday! Going forward, we’ll be doing pre-race testing with our race crew of 20 until the race, the 2017 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, which starts October 8. In mid-September, we’re moving from our current station…
By Kelsey Josund Our team motto is “Test it again”, and we’ve certainly been trying to do that! For Sundae we decided to shift our test schedule so race crew training, strategy model validation, and other testing are biased towards Australia. Nothing prepares you for driving through the Outback in a race like driving through…
By Kelsey Josund On Saturday July 1 we unveiled our 2017 car, Sundae. The team surrounds Sundae just after revealing the car It is the smallest car this team has ever built in accordance with the new rules for the 2017 World Solar Challenge, which only allow for four square meters of silicon solar cells,…
By Clare Tandy Stanford Solar Car would like to thank the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy for their additional contribution to our project, and specifically welcome them into our Gold Sponsor Tier. The Precourt Institute for Energy is committed to pursuing a transition to a sustainable and affordable energy future, as well as foster excitement…
By Roman Decca Building a solar car takes a lot of materials, and we realized early this week that we had not procured enough of the film adhesive we use to glue the sturdy core in our layups to the carbon fiber in our car’s aerobody. Typically, these materials have lead times of 4+ weeks…
By Clare Tandy Arrival of Molds & Progression of our Build Cycle On Thursday March 13th, 2017 our team finally received the next vehicle’s aerobody molds at the Automotive Innovation Lab! This was a huge moment for the team, as it marks our initial progression from the ideas and planning stage to the construction of…
By Clare Tandy The Stanford Solar Car project would like to express our gratitude to Hyundai Ventures and Hyundai Motor Group for their new commitment to our work improving the efficiency and performance of our next vehicle, due to race in the October 2017 World Solar Challenge. Hyundai Ventures, the US corporate venturing office for…