Solar cars visit Mossel Bay

Nine solar cars have been chasing the sun on South Africa’s best roads and also paid a visit to Mossel Bay at the Langeberg Mall on Friday, 28 September. They started in Pretoria on 22 September and the top teams have completed more than 3 500 km.

Teams come from SA, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong and The Netherlands.

The Friday, 28 September route from Sedgefield to Swellendam started with storms and strong winds, which cleared up by the time the teams reached Mossel Bay but made for a tough first stage.

With a final push to get the most distance possible, both front-runners from the Netherlands and Japan sacrificed time for distance.

Choosing to do extra laps of the route road that would see them cross the finish line late, Tokai and Nuon incurred start time penalties and started seventh and eighth respectively.

Swiss team Solar Energy Racers look well poised to take third place. After an impressive display of resilience, the team were on the road despite sustaining damage earlier in the challenge, and have travelled just more than 2 240km.

In the challenge for fourth place, SA’s Tshwane University of Technology and North-West University are battling it out against each other.

Photos: Waldo Swiegers Dutch car Nuna 9s makes her way out of the pitstop at Mossel Bay’s Langeberg Mall on day seven of the Sasol Solar Challenge. By this time, the highly-advanced car, currently the World Champion in solar racing, had done 3 000km on SA roads.

The South African high school team, Sonke Siyakude, works on their car at Langeberg Mall. Sonke is a team of brave learners aged 13 to 17 from two Pretoria schools. An alumnus and his 61-year-old racing driver mom piloted the homebuilt car through the country, and they did a full 656,9km, beating two South African universities.