Solar car built by UC Berkeley students takes test drive
UC Berkeley’s solar car club CalSol will depart in a week for the Midwest, solar vehicle in tow, to compete in the American Solar Challenge — the team’s first return to competition after more than a year sidelined by the pandemic.
The team would forgive you for gawking at Zephyr, the solar car in question, a 21/2-foot-tall creation that resembles a cross between a Tesla and something out of Star Wars.
“It looks like a flying saucer because we’re optimizing for efficiency,” said Alexander Zerkle, a recent Berkeley graduate who will be handling the team’s logistics during the competition. “It’s a handmade, unique, one-of-akind car.”
The team will first compete in a three-day track event in Kansas for the Formula Sun Grand Prix component of the challenge. Then they’ll travel to Independence, Mo., to compete in the road event, a 1,000 mile, fiveday course ending in Las Vegas, N.M., with the option for teams to complete additional miles to show off the capabilities of their cars.
To gear up, the students are putting in the hours at the Richmond Field Station, a UC Berkeley-owned 170-acre parcel that’s home to various student clubs and research. The university closed the station for the duration of the pandemic, with student access being restored only a month ago — a challenge for the hands-on team.
Michael Jia, a rising sophomore who saw the station for the first time last month, said there’s a world of difference between looking at a car on design software and seeing it in person. “The images
don’t do it justice,” he said.
Erik Francis, a rising senior on the team who accompanied Jia and other pandemic recruits to the field station, still remembers the feeling of testing the car to see how it held up after a year and a half of rest.
“It started right up,” he said with pride, while the other two students imitated the cheering and celebration that took place afterward.
Though the club has always prioritized their members gaining engineering skills over podium
finishes, the socially distanced year has put learning at the forefront of this summer’s competition, according to Zerkle. “We’re still aiming to do well,” he said, but the primary goal will be getting the new recruits familiar with how solar car racing works.
If the past is any indication, CalSol will have a good shot at making it to the podium. Zephyr took first and second place in the 2017 and 2018 Formula Sun Grand Prix races. By solar car standards, Zephyr is a relatively long-lived car, having first raced in 2014.
Learning is also the
goal of these competitions at large. The first solar car race took place in the 1980s, and the challenge has yet to yield a car that can be used by consumers.
“This vehicle weighs 500
pounds and has no air conditioner,” Zerkle said. “I don’t know of anybody who would want to buy this for their normal commute.”
But the solar cars that teams build for the competition
are road-ready, and Zephyr is complete with a California license plate and DMV registration. It can reach up to 80 mph, but during races, the team
targets a speed closer to 40 mph — the race is one more of endurance than speed.
The same applies to the drivers: Without air conditioning, the inside of the car can heat up quickly, so drivers need to pay attention to how they’re feeling and swap out at least every two hours. A CamelBak hydration pack is tucked behind the driver’s seat, allowing them to sip water from a tube.
“We have a mandatory hydration policy,” Zerkle said. The policy? “Hydrate a lot.”
In addition to no AC, the solar car also lacks crash features such as airbags. To protect the driver, Zephyr will be flanked by lead and chase vehicles and preceded by a scout car five minutes down the road, checking for hazards. The team communicates by amateur radio on the road.
“Block the car, protect the driver,” Jia said, modeling swerving around the solar car in a van as Zephyr made a right turn at the field station. “If I block like that, the oncoming traffic will run into this van before the car gets hit.”
Luckily, no one has gotten hurt in the club’s history.
Instead, the club’s 30 years of operation have been filled with fun memories and teamwork. That included figuring out the logistics of getting a car to Australia for the World Solar Challenge — hint: It involved shipping containers and large boats — and plenty of camaraderie when things didn’t go according to plan.
Zerkle recalled how during the 2018 American Solar Challenge, CalSol had a teammate who was enthralled by ducks — plush ducks, rubber ducks, etc. The team then ordered a package of plush ducks and hid them around the racecourse for him to find.
“It took him a week to figure out what was going on, it was an excellent memory,” Zerkle said. “The atmosphere is a great one to learn in.”