An Australian solar-powered car built by university students and weighing a quarter that of a Tesla has clocked 1,000 km in under 12 hours on a single charge, claiming a provisional Guiness world record.
The Sunswift 7 car, out of University of New South Wales Sydney, posted a time of 11 hours 53.32 minutes for the distance at the Australian Automotive Research Centre south of Melbourne.
That equates to an average speed of nearly 85km per hour and unofficially secured the Sunswift racing team the record for the ‘Fastest EV over 1,000km on a single charge’
The official honour – and Guinness World Record certificate – will be conferred once timing information and car telemetry data has been analysed and confirmed by a team of experts.
Sunswift team manager Andrea Holden, a UNSW mechanical engineering student, said it “feels weird” to help make something regarded as a world’s best.
“Two years ago, when we started to build this car, everything was going into lockdown and there were a lot of difficult moments,” Holden said. “It was a lot of work and a lot of hours and a lot of stress, but it’s all been worth it.”
Sunswift 7 is the latest in a stream of successful solar-powered cars from UNSW since the first vehicle was produced in 1996.
It weighs just 500kg, about one-fourth the weight of a Tesla, and boasts superb efficiencies thanks to its aerodynamic design, the efficiency of the motors and drive chain coupled with incredibly low rolling resistance.
The record attempt was not without high drama, though, with a battery management issue causing the car to come to a complete halt at one point.
The rules of the event state Sunswift 7 could not be stationary for more than 15 minutes at a time – and it took the team 14 minutes and 52 seconds to fix the problem and get back onto the track.
According to UNSW, the energy consumption of Sunswift 7 was just 3.8 kWh/100kmh, whereas even the most efficient EVs on the road today only achieve a rating of 15kWh/100km and the average is around 20kWH/100km.
Sunswift 7 isn’t a production car of the future due to its cost and lack of comfort but more importantly demonstrates that if the world wants to make cars more efficient, more sustainable, more environmentally friendly, then it is possible.
“This is amazing, incredible. Wow,” said Professor Richard Hopkins, the team principal who has previously won four F1 world titles as Head of Operations at Red Bull,
“The whole year has been leading to this point and it hasn’t been plain sailing. To be honest, we had our doubts whether we were going to be able to achieve it,” he said.
“So to come here and do what we set out to do is just the most incredible feeling. I’m sure those sentiments are shared amongst the whole team.
“Let’s remember, these are not the best paid professional car makers in Stuttgart working for Mercedes. This is a bunch of very smart amateurs who have taken all the ingredients and put it together in a brilliant way.
“But these young men and women are the future and they have already demonstrated here with Sunswift what they are capable of – imagine what they will do when we let them loose on the wider world.”
Sunswift 7 completed 240 laps of AARC’s Highway Circuit, equivalent to more than the driving distance from Sydney to Melbourne, to break the record. The car stopped only to allow for a change of driver every few hours – plus one tyre change due to a puncture and the nerve-wracking battery management repair.
Sunswift 7 isn’t a production car of the future due to its cost and lack of comfort but more importantly demonstrates that if the world wants to make cars more efficient, more sustainable, more environmentally friendly, then it is possible.