Students set on record with solar car journey

SYDNEY — A team of students left the Western Australian city of Perth on Saturday in an attempt to break the world record for traversing the continent with the lowest energy consumption in an electric car.

The University of New South Wales crew plan to make the 4,000kilometer journey to Sydney across the country’s harsh central desert using only 5.5 kW of energy per hour.

“Traditional cars are highly inefficient. When cruising, our car, ‘Violet’, uses about the same amount of energy as a four-slice toaster and we are aiming to use about eight times less energy per kilometer than a Tesla,” said Chelsea Liang, operations lead for the Sunswift team.

With the group made up of students aged 18 to 21, Violet is the sixth solar car designed and built by UNSW since the team was established in 1996.

Although most of the group are engineers and designers, the team also call upon several other scientific disciplines as well as other fields such as commerce.

“I see immediate benefit for students who participate in student-led programs such as Sunswift while at university, that being the significant competitive advantage they have

upon entering the workforce,” UNSW Dean of Engineering Professor Mark Hoffman said.

“They leave university not only with a first-class engineering degree, but also practical experience, plus teamwork, project management, budgeting and communications skills, all needed to do well in a corporate environment.”

For the moment, however, the students say that they just want to inspire their fellow Australians to learn more about solar technology and the planet-saving benefits of renewable energy.

“I am hoping that people will come out to see us along our journey and talk to us about the benefits of reducing our impact on our planet and how we can all contribute to this cause,” Liang said.