Michigan solar car charges ahead

EDITORS: Available for interviews—(live from the race) Nader Shwayhat, Team Captain, cell
Web updates available at www.engin.umich.edu/solarcar.

TULSA, Okla.—With the first half of the 2,300 mile American Solar Challenge behind them, the University of Michigan Solar Car Team is currently in second place and is battling for first. While the team is optimistic about their chances, they of all teams know that the road ahead can be unpredictably harsh. Dubbed M-Pulse, Michigan’s car almost did not make it to the starting line when a road accident nearly destroyed the car just weeks before the race.

Last month, while practicing along the actual race route near Oklahoma City, the car hit a series of potholes that launched the vehicle into a ditch. Although the lightweight car protected its driver admirably and no one was hurt, many of its sophisticated components were severely damaged, including its aerodynamic body, suspension, motor and all-important solar array. With just three weeks before the race, the team’s chances looked grim.

“My initial reaction was that they should drop out—there was no way that they were going to be able to race,” said Ken Kohrs, one of the two team’s faculty advisers. But the team’s determination and spirit could not be dampened. Within minutes of the accident, the crew was ordering parts and planning the repair schedule.

“It was a tremendous effort,” said Brian Gilchrist, the team’s other faculty adviser and engineering professor. “The team decided to do whatever they had to do to make the car drivable.”

According to Kohrs, a retired Ford vice president and industry co-director for the University’s Tauber Manufacturing Institute, team members often worked 36 hours straight, sleeping on concrete garage floors when not repairing the car. “They were more like a Formula One team than any other team I’ve worked with before,” said Kohrs.

“Working 24 hours a day, it took us 17 days to rebuild what was originally built in a year and a half,” said Nader Shwayhat, the team’s captain and engineering graduate student. “Several of the solar panels had to be shipped back to Germany, where the manufacturer worked on them like a surgeon. It was the first time he had done such emergency work.”

Now halfway through the race, the car is running well and the team is focused on winning. But the frantic repair schedule has not left the team’s performance untouched. The team lost almost an hour of early racing this week while fixing a broken LED light and a problem with the car’s instrumentation. Although minor, these glitches were problems that the original developmental schedule might have prevented.

“We haven’t reached that final level of refinement that would keep these bugs from biting us,” said Shwayhat. “We’re still working on the car in the evenings, and as the race progresses we hope to clear these things up.”

Michigan currently trails the leader and defending champion, the University of Missouri-Rolla, by about one hour, but the cars have been racing neck and neck over the last few days.

“Ever since the crash, we’ve been treating each step forward as a small victory,” said Shwayhat. “The team has really pulled together to keep us competitive.”

Thirty cars are competing in the race that runs along historic Route 66, beginning in Chicago on July 15 and finishing in Claremont, Calif., on July 25. The American Solar Challenge is an educational event in which participants build and race cars whose only source of fuel is the sun.

The U-M College of Engineering is consistently ranked among the top engineering schools in the world. The College is comprised of 11 academic departments: aerospace engineering; atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences; biomedical engineering; chemical engineering; civil and environmental engineering; electrical engineering and computer science; industrial and operations engineering; materials science and engineering; mechanical engineering; naval architecture and marine engineering; and nuclear engineering and radiological sciences. Each year the College enrolls over 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students and grants about 1,000 undergraduate degrees and 600 masters and doctoral degrees. To learn more, visit Web site at www.engin.umich.edu.

www.engin.umich.edu/solarcarAmerican Solar ChallengeKen KohrsBrian GilchristTauber Manufacturing InstituteCollege of Engineering