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Sunraycer
The Sunraycer was a solar-powered race car designed to compete in the World Solar Challenge, the world's first race featuring solar-powered cars. The Sunraycer was a joint collaboration between General Motors, AeroVironment, and Hughes Aircraft. The Sunraycer won the first World Solar Challenge in 1987. The team's lead driver was John Harvey, an Australian driver with (at the time) nearly 40 years of racing experience. Harvey was involved with the testing and development of the Sunraycer at the General Motors Proving Ground in Arizona. Development The Sunraycer project started with a request from GM's Australian division to GM Headquarters to participate in the upcoming World Solar Challenge. This race, to be held in Australia in late 1987, would feature purely solar-powered cars. Roger Smith, the CEO of GM, was interested in the idea and agreed to fund a study to see if a solar powered car could be built within 10 months. Smith hired AeroVironment to do the study. A month ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Harvey (racing Driver)
John Francis Harvey (21 February 1938 – 5 December 2020) was an Australian racing driver. He was a top Speedcar driver for many years in the 1950s and 1960s, winning many championship races including the NSW Championship for three successive years and the Victorian Championship twice before turning his skills to road racing where he had a long and successful career until his retirement at the end of 1988. In 1987 John made history driving the General Motors Sunraycer to victory in the inaugural World Solar Challenge from Darwin to Adelaide, the first international race for purely solar powered cars. Career Despite being regarded as one of the best Speedcar drivers in Australia, Harvey switched from speedway to road racing in 1964 following the deaths of a few friends in Speedcar racing, as well as a contentious 6-month suspension received from the Sydney-based National Speedcar Club officials after he was alleged to spin fellow driver Al Staples in a scratch race at the Sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Solar Challenge
The World Solar Challenge (WSC), since 2013 named Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, is an international event for solar powered cars driving 3000 kilometres through the Australian outback. With the exception of a four-year gap between the 2019 and 2023 events, owing to the cancellation of the 2021 event, the World Solar Challenge is typically held every two years. The course is over through the Australian Outback, from Darwin, Northern Territory, to Adelaide, South Australia. The event was created to foster the development solar-powered vehicles. The WSC attracts teams from around the world, most of which are fielded by universities or corporations, although some are fielded by high schools. It has a 32-year history spanning fifteen events, with the inaugural event taking place in 1987. Initially held once every three years, the event became biennial from the turn of the century. Since 2001 the WSC was won seven times out of ten efforts by the Nuna team and cars o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Smith (executive)
Roger Bonham Smith (July 12, 1925 – November 29, 2007) was the chairman and CEO of General Motors Corporation from 1981 to 1990, and is widely known as the main subject of Michael Moore's 1989 documentary film ''Roger & Me''. Smith seemed to be the last of the old-line GM chairmen, a conservative anonymous bureaucrat, resisting change. However, propelled by industry and market conditions, Smith oversaw some of the most fundamental changes in GM's history. When Smith took over GM, it was reeling from its first annual loss since the early 1920s. Its reputation had been tarnished by lawsuits, persistent quality problems, bad labor relations, public protests over the installation of Chevrolet engines in Oldsmobiles, and by a poorly designed diesel engine. GM was also losing market share to foreign automakers for the first time. Deciding that GM needed to completely change its structure in order to be competitive, Smith instituted a sweeping transformation. Initiatives includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Motors
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and was the largest in the world for 77 years before losing the top spot to Toyota in 2008. General Motors operates manufacturing plants in eight countries. Its four core automobile brands are Chevrolet, Buick, GMC (automobile), GMC, and Cadillac. It also holds interests in Chinese brands Wuling Motors and Baojun as well as DMAX (engines), DMAX via joint ventures. Additionally, GM also owns the BrightDrop delivery vehicle manufacturer, GM Defense, a namesake Defense vehicles division which produces military vehicles for the United States government and military; the vehicle safety, security, and information services provider OnStar; the auto parts company ACDelco, a GM Financial, namesake financial lending service; and majority ownership in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Car
A solar car is a solar vehicle for use on public roads or race tracks. Solar vehicles are electric vehicles that use self-contained solar cells to power themselves fully or partially from sunlight. Solar vehicles typically contain a rechargeable battery to help regulate and store the energy from the solar cells and from regenerative braking. Some solar cars can be plugged into external power sources to supplement the power of sunlight used to charge their battery. Solar cars combine technology typically used in the aerospace, bicycle, alternative energy and automotive industries. The design of solar vehicles always emphasizes energy efficiency to make maximum use of the limited amount of energy they can receive from sunlight. Most solar cars have been built for the purpose of solar car races. However several prototypes of solar cars designed for use on public roads have been designed and built. There are various solar car competitions around the world that are generally partaken ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuna 3
The Nuna 3 is a solar car developed by Nuon Solar Team form the Delft University of Technology in 2004-2005 for the 2005 World Solar Challenge. It succeeded the Nuna2, the solar car that scored a second consecutive win for this solar team by winning the World Solar Challenge for the third time in a row. Nuna 3 was one of the favourites for the 2005 edition of the World Solar Challenge with a pre-race test-drive recorded top speed of 130 km/h. The final result was that the 3021 kilometers between Darwin and Adelaide were covered in a record 29 hours and 11 minutes, averaging about 103 km/h. It has very efficient solar cells of a type normally used to power orbital satellites (as had the previous Nunas), and it has better aerodynamics and is lighter than its predecessors. It was designed and built by 11 students from different disciplines of the Delft University of Technology, who have partly put their studies on hold for this. They used the high-tech labs and worksho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Automobile Drag Coefficient
The drag coefficient is a common measure in automotive design as it pertains to aerodynamics. Drag is a force that acts parallel to and in the same direction as the airflow. The drag coefficient of an automobile measures the way the automobile passes through the surrounding air. When automobile companies design a new vehicle they take into consideration the automobile drag coefficient in addition to the other performance characteristics. Aerodynamic drag increases with the square of speed; therefore it becomes critically important at higher speeds. Reducing the drag coefficient in an automobile improves the performance of the vehicle as it pertains to speed and fuel efficiency. There are many different ways to reduce the drag of a vehicle. A common way to measure the drag of the vehicle is through the drag area. Reducing drag The reduction of drag in road vehicles has led to increases in the top speed of the vehicle and the vehicle's fuel efficiency, as well as many other perfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul MacCready
Paul B. MacCready Jr. (September 25, 1925 – August 28, 2007) was an American aeronautical engineer. He was the founder of AeroVironment and the designer of the human-powered aircraft that won the first Kremer prize. He devoted his life to developing more efficient transportation vehicles that could "do more with less". Early life and education Born in New Haven, Connecticut to a medical family, MacCready was an inventor from an early age and won a national contest building a model flying machine at the age of 15. "I was always the smallest kid in the class ... by a good bit, and was not especially coordinated, and certainly not the athlete type, who enjoyed running around outside, and was socially kind of immature, not the comfortable leader, teenager type. And so, when I began getting into model airplanes, and getting into contests and creating new things, I probably got more psychological benefit from that than I would have from some of the other typical school things." Mac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Motors EV1
The General Motors EV1 was an electric car produced and leased by General Motors from 1996 to 1999. It was the first mass-produced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era from a major automaker and the first GM car designed to be an electric vehicle from the outset. The decision to mass-produce an electric car came after GM received a favorable reception for its 1990 Impact electric concept car, upon which the design of the EV1 drew heavily. Inspired partly by the Impact's perceived potential for success, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) subsequently passed a mandate that made the production and sale of zero-emissions vehicles (ZEV) a requirement for the seven major automakers selling cars in the United States to continue to market their vehicles in California. The EV1 was made available through limited lease-only agreements, initially to residents of the cities of Los Angeles, California, and Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. EV1 lessees were officially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a Megadiverse countries, megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with Deserts of Australia, deserts in the centre, tropical Forests of Australia, rainforests in the north-east, and List of mountains in Australia, mountain ranges in the south-east. The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately Early human migrations#Nearby Oceania, 65,000 years ago, during the Last Glacial Period, last i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kevlar
Kevlar (para-aramid) is a strong, heat-resistant synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965, the high-strength material was first used commercially in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires. It is typically spun into ropes or fabric sheets that can be used as such, or as an ingredient in composite material components. Kevlar has many applications, ranging from bicycle tires and racing sails to bulletproof vests, all due to its high tensile strength-to-weight ratio; by this measure it is five times stronger than steel. It is also used to make modern marching drumheads that withstand high impact; and for mooring lines and other underwater applications. A similar fiber called Twaron with the same chemical structure was developed by Akzo in the 1970s; commercial production started in 1986, and Twaron is now manufactured by Teijin. History Poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide (K2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the three branches of the federal government. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist administratively in 1967. Called "the nation's attic" for its eclectic holdings of 154 million items, the institution's 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, and zoo include historical and architectural landmarks, mostly located in the District of Columbia. Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York, and Virginia. More than 200 institutions and museums in 45 states,States without Smithsonian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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