Stanford Solar Car races with the summer sun

On a bright Oklahoma morning, Greg Hall ’13, a member of the Stanford Solar Car Project’s electrical team, woke up to a radio call blaring that the team’s solar car, Apogee, was engulfed in blue smoke.

“We’d get panicked and call, ‘The solar car is on fire!’” Hall said.

The car wouldn’t really catch on fire, but unanticipated bugs in its circuitry–or more simply, the “electronics blowing up”–sometimes caused blue smoke.

Small explosions are fairly routine while racing a solar car for a month straight, said Hall, who was one of nearly a dozen Stanford students to spend this summer competing in the North American Solar Challenge.

The biennial race is a 1,200-mile trek from Broken Arrow, Okla., to Naperville, Ill. About 20 other universities around the world from countries such as Germany, Taiwan and Turkey, competed this year.

Mornings during the race started before sunrise when team members woke to charge the car. While the top half of the car was removed and placed on a steel structure to capture sunlight, the team checked the car’s electrical systems, the day’s weather report and the car’s battery. Once the lead and the chase vehicles–the cars carrying gear and most of the team–were packed, it was time to hit the road.

Each day, two lucky drivers each spent four to five hours in the vehicle’s snug, one-person seat. Drivers frequently didn’t have time to visit the bathroom, and there was no air conditioning. It’s a rough combination while driving through 100-plus degree weather in the American South.

“There’s a famous story from the 2005 race: it came down to the wire with Cal 30 minutes behind us,” Hall said. “And I know that [Stanford] repeatedly denied the driver bathroom breaks.”

“I mean, it’s Cal,” he added.

At noon, the car can generate about a kilowatt of power from solar rays, enough energy to power four desktop computers or 10 fairly large light bulbs, Hall said. The 420-pound car, built almost entirely from carbon fiber, is extremely aerodynamic and can go for a couple of hours at highway speeds.

Hall heard about Solar Car even before he enrolled at Stanford–he met members of the team in his Admit Weekend dorm. After attending meetings and hanging around the shop freshman year, he was eventually invited to race with the team.

“There is a steep learning curve, so you have to hang around the car for a while before you can do something useful,” he said.

Over the summer, Hall drove for about four days. Though the ride can be uncomfortable, he said driving a solar car is more engaging than driving an ordinary car. For starters, drivers are seated in the middle of the car, which can cause people accustomed to sitting off-center in traditional vehicles to drift in their lanes. And throughout the race, drivers are in constant communication with team members and race officials, who tell them if they need to pass another vehicle or make a turn. Drivers are also notified if they are violating race rules.

Racing for the day ended at around 5 or 6 p.m. and was followed by dinner and repair work until midnight or 1 a.m. Work time was usually accompanied by watermelon snack breaks and techno music.

“The judges said, ‘We don’t like those Stanford kids’ liberal spirit,’” Hall recalled. “I think they thought we were having too much fun.”

This year’s car, which team leader Nathan Hall-Snyder ’12 described in an e-mail to The Daily as the team’s most durable yet, came in fourth.

Hall-Snyder has been on the team for two years, and he took fall quarter of his sophomore year off to race the car in Australia. He built his own sports car in his garage in high school, and team members regard him as the go-to source for anything solar.

The student-run club was founded in 1989. It recently received $2 million from Volkswagen for the construction of the new Stanford Solar Car shop. Volkswagen also committed $750,000 a year to the team for five years. The team is working on its 10th car in preparation for the next race, the 2011 World Solar Challenge across the Australian outback.

The team has close ties to the renewable energy technology sector of Silicon Valley.

“We work closely with companies like VW, Linear Technology and STMicroelectronics on cutting-edge electric vehicle technology at a pace that you’ll never find anywhere in industry,” Hall-Snyder said.

Tesla’s current chief technical officer, JB Straubel ’98 M.S. ’00, is an alumnus of the team, and the first prototype of the Tesla battery pack was built in Stanford’s former Solar Car shop. Besides its commercial connections, the primary purpose of the project is educational.

“On Solar Car, a part you design or build, instead of being turned in for a grade, could carry you or one of your teammates across Australia on a race,” Hall-Snyder said.

When the team isn’t spending late nights in the shop or making food runs to Tandoori Oven near campus, Solar takes its car to local K-12 schools in the Bay Area and gives talks about pursuing an engineering education.

Hall-Snyder said the team’s long-term goal is to become the best solar racing team in the U.S. He is excited about what the team’s next car could do to meet that goal.

“After doing some investigation freshman year, I think it’s the coolest hands-on engineering project that’s available to undergraduates,” Hall said.

Solar Car meetings take place at 12 p.m. on Saturdays and 7:30 p.m. on Mondays in the team’s on-campus shop. Interested students can read more about them at http://solarcar.stanford.edu.