This upcoming July, we will be participating in the 2008 North American Solar Challenge (www.americansolarchallenge.org); a 10 day, 2500 mile trek from Dallas, Texas to Calgary, Alberta. Currently over 20 teams are registered and it is exciting to see teams from outside North America register as well!

Our 2008 race season began this past January with the selection of a new race crew and the return of Continuum from Australia. We have an outstanding race crew composed of many members from the previous 2007 Race Crew who participated in the 2007 Panasonic World Solar Challenge. In addition, we have added four new members to our engineering and strategy divisions.

Continuum is in excellent shape. The nose and body have been reformed and we have built new revisions of many of the mechanical and electrical parts on the car. The rules for the North American Solar Challenge are very similar to those of the Panasonic World Solar Challenge, however a few differences exist. This has caused a few changes to Continuum, such as the addition of strobe lights on the top of our vehicle.

Following the goals of our team, we will continue to strive to enter the best team into the 2008 North American Solar Challenge! Thank you to all our sponsors, friends, families, and team members that contribute to making this goal a reality.

Go Fast! Go Smooth! Go Blue!

A couple weeks ago several of us went down to Fairfield, Virginia, to meet with a potential sponsor, Base-X . Base-X is the leading provider of rapid-deploying mobile infrastructure, and they have agreed to sponsor our team with three such structures. We spent the day learning what Base-X does and explaining what our team does, touring the facilities, and deciding on what shelters will best suit our needs. This also gave us a good first test run of one of our four Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid models, loaned to us this summer by long-time sponsor General Motors.

They have agreed to donate two of their 305 models, which are each 18’ x 25’. One will be used to house the car while it is being worked on, while the other will be used for strategy, operations, meetings, and sleeping at the end of the day. For times when we don’t have the space to set these up, we will also have one of their smaller 203 models, with no sidewalls, to use simply as a shield from the sun. Within the next couple of weeks they will be sending a crew of people up to Ann Arbor to train us in setting up the structures.

While our stay in Fairfield was very brief, we were fortunate enough to have our stay sponsored by Sugar Tree Inn, owned by Jeff and Becky Chanter. The rooms were fantastic and Jeff and Becky were kind enough to wake up early to prepare a delicious breakfast for us prior to our meeting. I would recommend the Inn to anyone traveling in that area.

Here are a few pictures from our day:

Our cabin at Sugar Tree Inn, along with Spencer’s car and the Tahoe loaned to us by General Motors.

Breakfast provided by Sugar Tree Inn.

We were happy to see this greeting as we walked in to the Base-X facility.

An example shelter they had set up at the facility.

With the arrival of May and the warm weather it brings, the team resumes testing of Continuum for the 2008 North American Solar Challenge. After completion of mechanical system upgrades and modifications for NASC ’08, our engineers were eager to get Continuum out of the garage and onto the skidpad. After testing the car at low speeds and familiarizing our one new driver with the vehicle, the team successfully conducted dynamic testing.

Spencer driving across the skidpad:Steve navigating the slalom:Engineers watching attentively as testing progresses: