Seattle Times, Living:
Monday, June 25, 1990

Discovery

Western Student's Solar Car Is Hot To Go -- Reversible Vehicle Takes To The Road For National Race

Hill Williams

The summer sun arrived just in time for testing a lopsided-appearing solar-powered car that is causing double takes along back roads in Whatcom County - and has captured national attention. The car, the Viking XX built by students at Western Washington University in Bellingham, has been tooling silently through the green countryside during shakedown tests for a grueling 11-day Florida-to-Michigan race next month. The car resembles a gleaming white torpedo on a bicycle wheel. It is topped by an unconventional sloping solar panel that apparently will be one-of-a-kind in the race.

"The looks on the faces of some of the bystanders are pretty interesting," said Michael Seal, faculty adviser.

The car is reversible. Mornings during the south-to-north race, it will run with the sloping panel taking full advantage of the sun rising in the east. At noon, students will turn the car end-for-end so the panel will catch the setting sun in the west.

"As far as we know, no one else has tried the sloping panel and a car that goes both ways," Seal said.

The design caught the attention of Popular Science magazine, which described the Viking XX in the June issue and will feature it on the cover of the August issue going on sale July 10, one day after the race starts.

The car is leaving Bellingham for Florida today after frantic days of road-testing. Students found the original steering system was not precise. It took four design changes to correct that.

"On a round trip to Blaine - 73 miles by back roads - the tires kept blowing," Seal said. "We discovered the wheels had sharp edges inside we didn't know about. The students have been getting in as many road miles each day as they can, and then working all night to correct whatever problems showed up."

The Viking XX is the first solar project of the university's Vehicle Research Institute, which has built a series of prize-winning internal-combustion cars.

Thirty-two colleges and universities have entered GM Sunrayce 1990, said Tom Stumpo of General Motors Corp., a sponsor along with the Department of Energy and the Society of Automotive Engineers. The race will begin in Orlando, Fla., and end in Warren, Mich.

Cars will run during daylight hours. The winner will be the car with the shortest total running time. Bill Lingenfelter, captain of the student team, expects Viking XX to exceed the world speed record of 49 mph for solar-powered vehicles. The car has handled well at 45 mph on Whatcom County roads, he said.

As first designed, Viking XX had a theoretical top speed exceeding 100 miles an hour. Seeking a competitive edge, students traded that excess speed - useless on highways with a 55 mph limit - for a lower gear ratio that will provide greater acceleration and climbing power.

Even in a car without gears, the students devised a sort of shift. The vehicle's two drivers, who will sit back-to-back, will be within reach of a control rod connected to a switch on the motor. For starting from a stop or climbing a steep grade, the driver will shift to a an electrical hookup that gives the 20-horsepower motor more torque, more power to turn the wheels at low speed.

"When they get up to 40 miles an hour, they'll pull the control rod to get the motor into its higher speed, just like overdrive," Seal said.

The students opted for a two-person car in order to qualify under race rules for a bigger solar panel. Calculations showed that the extra power would more than offset the extra weight. With both drivers, the car will weigh 800 pounds.

The student grapevine has enabled Western students to keep up on competitors' efforts. They learned that three other schools switched to two-person cars after starting work on single-cockpit designs.

One of them, Crowder College of Neosho, Mo., performed well in the 1987 World Solar Challenge race in Australia and is considered a top competitor. Crowder went for a catamaran design, with a driver in each pod.

"The Crowder car has built-in aerodynamic lift to take road drag off the tires," Seal said. "They're wrong. It's been tried before. Air drag increases much faster than road drag decreases."

Another tough competitor with a two-person car, Mankato (Minn.) State University, designed its panel to capture maximum sun power during the daily battery-recharging periods. Race rules require cars to use the two hours after sunrise and before sunset to recharge. The Mankato car has two panels arranged like a peaked house roof. One panel can be tilted up to take full advantage of a low sun for recharging.

"It's a clever design and will be a good recharging car,'' Seal commented. ``In the midday, with the sun high, it will be as good as ours. But we have a fat spot early and late in the day when ours will be much better."

Most of the entries use a teardrop shape covered with solar cells similar to the GM Sunraycer that easily won the 1987 race in Australia.

Western students have raised $160,000 in cash for the solar-car project. Contributions of equipment and services push the total close to $200,000.

GM will send the top three cars in the American race to Australia for the next running of the international competition in November. Win or lose, Viking XX is assured of going to Australia. If it's not among the top three, it will use an entry donated to the university by John Paul Mitchell Systems of Beverly Hills, Calif., a maker of hair-care products.

Word of Western's innovative design prompted the California company, which was encountering problems completing its own entry, to award its entry slot to Viking XX along with a donation of more than $10,000.

The solar-energy industry is enthusiastic about the race as a spur to technological innovation.

"If these vehicles can go 1,600 miles, we definitely should be able to drive to work and back in them," said Gary Starr, president of Solar Electric of Rohnert Park, Calif., which has sold a few electric cars equipped with solar panels as a supplemental source of power.

Robert Stempel, GM president, said the Florida-to-Michigan race "truly can be characterized as a race for our future."

Copyright (c) 1990 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved.