University of New South Wales students running the Sunswift Australian solar racing team have had their distance-speed record of 106.96km/h officially recognised.
The Sunswift Australian solar racing team has had it unofficial distance-speed record recognised by the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile governing body, breaking a 26-year record. Run by a team of students from the University of New South Wales, the Sunswift eVe covered 500km back in July setting an average speed of 106.9666km/h (besting the previous record of 73km/h).
While eVe is fitted with solar panels, potentially offering perpetual drive, the panels had to be switched off during the record attempt with the vehicle having to rely on pure-electric power from its batteries. According to the engineers, eVe can cover around 800km on a single charge.
This distance-speed record joins the teams other achievements, having set the fastest solar-powered road trip from Perth to Sydney and a Guinness World Record for the fastest solar-powered car.
“It’s not often you can confidently say you made history before you even graduated,” Sunswift’s project director and undergraduate engineering student Hayden Smith said in a statement.
But the team isn’t going to rest on its laurels and plans to get eVe road registered within 12 months. That means eVe is parked up in the garage while extensive modifications are carried out, including new windscreens and windscreen wipers, headlights and much more.
“Five hundred kilometers is pretty much as far as a normal person would want to drive in a single day,” Smith said. “It’s another demonstration that one day you could be driving our car.”
“We’ve always wanted to keep pushing the cultural change towards electric vehicles, and this is another big step in that direction,” he added. “This record was about establishing a whole new level of single-charge travel for high-speed electric vehicles, which we hope will revolutionize the electric car industry.”
