Midnight Sun auto signals new dawn for University of Waterloo
Engineering students design and build solar-powered vehicle to compete in prestigious American Solar Challenge
KITCHENER — Titus Chow slipped into the driver’s seat of the solar-powered car with a smile as bright as the sun.
“It is definitely exciting,” said Chow, a member of the Midnight Sun Solar Car Team at the University of Waterloo.
Every two years the team unveils a new vehicle they designed and built.
The latest was made public Saturday before a crowd of sponsors, team members, family and engineering faculty.
It will compete against solar vehicles made by engineering students from around the world.
“We took something that was just ideas and made it into an actual car you can sit in and drive,” said Chow. “It is pretty amazing.”
The white body of the Midnight Sun vehicle is covered in flexible, highperformance solar panels.
Under the hood is a 16-kilowatt battery pack. There is a room for the driver and one passenger. It weighs about 500 kilograms, and is expected to cruise along between 80 and 100 kilometres-an-hour.
“It works well,” said Chow. Members of the University of Waterloo team leave for Nebraska on Wednesday. Preliminary vetting of the solar cars begins Friday on a track about two hours from Omaha.
Midnight Sun must demonstrate it is road-worthy and safe before race officials will allow it on the road.
“The fact that it drives and everything is amazing, but there are always improvements to be made,” said Chow.
The American Solar Challenge is held once every two years.
It is open to college and university teams from around the world that build a solar-powered vehicle. This year the race is from Omaha, Neb., to Bend, Ore. The distance: 2,735 kilometres. Bragging rights go to first-, second- and third-place finishers.
The Midnight Sun vehicle cost between $150,000 and $200,000 to design and build.
And it was Micah Bai’s job to raise the funds and find sponsors.
The third-year computer science and business student will also be among three drivers who will take turns behind the wheel during the race.
“The first person who rode in the car is actually a sponsor who painted our car for free, which is why it looks absolutely gorgeous,” said Bai as he watched the vehicle move across a university parking lot.
This solar-powered car looks like a sports car, rather than something out of sci-fi graphic novel. The single, most expensive component is the array of solar panels that covers a large part of the body.
“So when we tell people they can’t touch the solar array, they really can’t touch the solar array,” said Bai.
The entry rules for this year’s American Solar Challenge are different. Entrants had to build vehicles for two, three or four people. What engineers call “cruiser class.” That’s why Midnight Sun’s vehicle looks more like a traditional car than some of its earlier counterparts.
“The whole idea behind ‘cruiser class’ is to be build a more practical vehicle, so that’s what we did,” said Tak Alguire, a third-year electrical engineering student and the team’s project manager.
The competition has two stages. The first is called the Formula Sun Grand Prix. This is held on a track. The solarpowered vehicles must drive 300 to 400 kilometres in a single day, or 500 to 600 kilometres during two days. Only the vehicles completing the Formula Sun will be issued with temporary licences that allow the experimental cars on the roads for the American Solar Challenge. “There are a lot of teams from across North America and even around the world,” said Alguire. “I think there are Russian, Middle Eastern and Italian teams coming this year. Australia as well.”
For the past two years Minghao Ji, the engineering manager for Midnight Sun, enjoyed the work so much he is thinking about changing the focus of his career. Ji is a fourth-year student in electrical engineering. He’s completed internships at Microsoft, Intel and Apple, building computer chips.
“The things that make this car very special, especially when you look at other solar cars in the world, we actually have a steel frame in the vehicle and we have body panels like a traditional vehicle,” said Ji.
“That makes our manufacturing a lot more reliable I think, and the end product looks really, really professional.”
During his university studies, Ji focused on silica engineering — making computer chips. But his experience with Midnight Sun has him thinking about other career tracks. Maybe management consulting.
“Every single inch was completely designed by undergraduate students, we had a lot of help with manufacturing from sponsors,” said Ji.