This post was written by Continuum Mechanical Engineer, Doug Lambert.

The first meeting I remember for Continuum was a small discussion at the end of August in 2005.  I had just won a national championship with Momentum and other students were just starting to arrive on campus before we would leave for Australia.  The attitude of the team in those days was that our main race was NASC and then if we were able we would race in WSC after, and though our hopes would rise as the race got nearer we knew we didn’t really have a chance to win.  Team Mechanical, the mechanical engineers on Momentum’s race crew, had been discussing what we could do to improve our chances in the upcoming race and concluded that mechanically we couldn’t do much to win the race, that mechanical parts could only make us lose by being unreliable or by being too heavy.  The way for us on Team Mechanical to influence the race would be to take on more challenging designs so we could allow aerodynamics to be better.  It was too late for that to happen for Momentum in WSC, but we figured the next car could take advantage when we got back.

In that first meeting, Team Mechanical and Chris Churchill decided there would be an aerodynamic benefit to having a 3-wheeled car with the single wheel in the front, and that we would be up to designing suspension and steering that could allow it to work.  Chris was a graduate student that had helped us the previous school year with design work and was a previous team leader for Principia’s solar car team, so when we asked him to help get the team going in the right direction while we were in Australia he nearly finished building a test vehicle by the time we got back.

I think the real significance of Continuum is that it was a transition point in the team’s history.  As I mentioned earlier, the attitude of the previous project was to win NASC and then maybe compete in WSC if possible.  As far as I’m aware that had always been the philosophy of the team, which made Continuum the first project to focus on winning a world championship from its beginning.  The winner of WSC 2005, Nuna, had averaged over 100 kph, and so we figured we had to design a car to do 110 kph in order to have a shot of winning WSC 2007.  In order to pursue that goal we changed every major system on the car, not just the aero and mechanical.  We replaced our old motor and motor controlled with newer ones that would be a few percent more efficient.  We replaced the power trackers for the array to try to optimize a little more.  The battery pack was a different chemistry than we had used to try to increase our capacity.

 

The other major transition was on the kind of design cycle we used, and it wasn’t a change we had planned on making.  Over the summer of 2006 we had a finished aero design and were looking for a sponsor to make the body molds for us.  Luckily, we were slow to find one, because WSC announced major regulation changes that would have put our car in a non-competitive exhibition class.  That same summer rumors started spreading that NASC would cancel the race in 2007 due to funding problems.  Our project cycle suddenly changed from having two years to design, build, and test then racing in July and October of the same year to a compressed one-year design and then race every year.

We had some growing pains, to put it lightly, adapting to the quicker design cycle.  It seems like the more recent teams have managed much better than we did that first year.  When I was the engineering director in the first half of 2007, I sometimes wondered whether we would have a fully tested car to ship to Australia or if the first time the car drove would be on the left side of the road.  The new regulations did open a door for us, though.  They allowed more surface area than array area and removed regulations that prohibited mirrors and lenses from being used to focus light.  We took advantage to create the concentrator system on Continuum, which was ambitious but created even more work and pushed us later.  Even with the lack of extensive testing and underdeveloped strategy that caused, Continuum had a real chance of winning the first world championship for an American student team.  I still think we would have won if not for our crash, but it’s impossible to know for sure.

Trying to start on the next project while modifying Continuum to race NASC in2008 was another new experience we struggled with.  The initial plan was to kind of divide the team and run both projects in parallel, but it seemed like the focus was all on preparing for the race and not designing a new car.  As a result, Infinium was forced into something more along the one-year design schedule Continuum had rather than the longer schedule allowed on earlier programs.  On the bright side, racing Continuum in NASC allowed new team members to get experience quickly and carry it through to the design of the next car.

Is it possible to consider the past 5 years and 3 cars an era?  If so, I’d like to say that the significance of Continuum was in creating the modern era of the team.  We changed the ambitions of the team, and the process of getting there.  Frequently we suffered from those changes, but the end result was a good car and a stronger team to carry on our legacy.  Now all we need is a car to finally fulfill our goal of winning a world championship.  Hopefully we won’t have to wait past October 19.

This post was written by Wolverine Operations Member, Jose Alvarez.

When I first joined the solar car team in the fall of 1996, I thought of it as a new learning opportunity and a way to meet new friends. I didn’t figure that it would turn into what turned into a full time job along going to school. I was part of team from 1996 through 1999 and was a member of race crew for Sunrayce ‘97 and ‘99, both times as part of the Operations group.  In those three years I had many great memories and saw some incredible things, but my favorite solar car memory was the Last Chance Qualifier for Sunrayce ’97 (the precursor to today’s North American Solar Challenge) at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Growing up I was a big fan of Indy Cars, so having the opportunity to visit, let alone race a car at IMS was a huge deal for me.

If you aren’t familiar with the qualification process for solar car races, teams arrive a few days before qualifiers to go through a scrutineering process to make sure their vehicles meet race regulations and are safe to drive. The qualifier itself requires teams to race around a track until a set mileage is achieved.

For Sunrayce ’97 there were two early qualifiers (one at the GM Proving Grounds in Arizona and the other at the Proving Grounds in Michigan).  We qualified Wolverine 15th at the East Qualifier at Milford, but between the qualifier and the time to head to the actual race the team made some modifications and upgrades to the car. This meant that we would have to compete in the Last Chance qualifier at IMS to earn our starting spot in the field.

After arriving at the speedway, the mechanical/electrical/aero portions of the team took Wolverine through scrutineering. The operations team mainly worked on making the race vehicles were ready for the race and that the equipment we brought on our vehicle/machining trailer made the trip to Indy okay.

Once we passed scrutineering we were finally able to get Wolverine out on the track for some practice. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to see a car I helped build running on the same racetrack I watched many of my favorite drivers race and to be doing do from pit road! All the excitement was tempered when we saw that Wolverine wasn’t exactly riding smooth, which meant redoing the suspension setup before Qualifying the next day.

All of the teams at the race were setup at different garages in famed Gasoline Alley and the organizers allowed us to spend the night working on our vehicles to prep them for qualifying. It was actually a great opportunity to get to know some of the other teams and help them out where possible. I think it was Western Michigan that brought couches and set them up outside their garage, while Minnesota held a Mountain Dew chugging contest to get some empty two liters. It was a great way to blow off some steam before racing in the qualifier the next day.

When qualifiers started the next day things could not have gone better for Wolverine.  The car was running smooth and we qualified easily, the first team to do so, and only stopped in the pits to check tires and do driver swap outs. We kept on running to improve our starting order (determined by most mileage completed in the qualifier) and to help cycle our battery pack before the race. We even took a little bit of a leisurely pace after lunch since it looked like we were on pace to finish cycling the pack and didn’t want to risk the car unnecessarily.

That plan changed when we saw that Stanford and Missouri-Columbia were gaining on us in lap counts. We started keeping an eye on where Stanford and Missouri’s track position.  Strategy changed their plans and started coaching the driver on a lap by lap basis to try and preserve the battery pack as long as possible. It was a race situation that happens all the time in Indy Car or NASCAR, you’re trying to save up your fuel to make it to the end of the race, but you need to go fast enough to hold off the other cars.

To add to the drama, we started to get concerned about the rear tire on Wolverine just when the race day was coming to a close. It looked like it was going flat and the only way to make sure was to bring the car in to pit. To save time in the pit box, it was decided that only a few people would go over the wall to lift the rear of the car and for the chief engineer to check the tire.  I volunteered to go and help lift the car, and when Wolverine stopped in front of us I got to do something I had only dreamed of, to jump over the pit wall at Indianapolis and work on a car. The stop took only about a minute and we were soon back on the track having lost very little track position.

We continued to battle with Stanford for the last few laps until the race day ended, winning the qualifier after completing 120 laps for 300 miles. To put this in perspective, George Washington and Cal State – LA, the winners of the East and West Qualifiers respectively, had only completed about 270 miles each. The next morning Wolverine crossed the starting line at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 10:13 AM and Sunrayce ‘97 was underway.

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Joining the solar car team during her sophomore year in 2007, Julia Hawley started as an events coordinator for Continuum. Later that year in December, she was elected Business Director, a position she held until she graduated from the Ross School of Business in 2010.

Currently, Julia works for Google in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an Account Manager with AdWords on the Consumer Packaged Goods team. At Google, Julia continues to participate on the business side of an engineering project, taking full advantage and opportunity to learn about all the products Google engineers create.

“It makes my job much more meaningful to understand how I fit into the bigger picture and to see how hard the other teams at Google work. Being the Business Director for the [solar car] team has taught me a lot about management and what needs to happen in order for the team to succeed. This perspective has allowed me to be more proactive with my leadership team at Google.”

Julia has recalled countless memories of being on the team, but one of her favorites was when she helped to arrange the 2005 Alumni trip to Aruba. She was sitting at work and the Prime Minister of Aruba started G-chatting her to figure out the logistics of the trip. Moments like that happened frequently, continuously blowing her away with how incredible the team was.

“However, the memory that can always make me laugh was one night in Australia, the whole team was sleeping when Frederick Barthelemy, an alumnus of the team, shot up and started screaming ‘it’s coming in!’ The whole team jolted awake, some people were up and out of the tent in panic in a blink of the eye. I on the other hand turned to John Federspiel who was next to me to ask what had happened. He explained (half asleep) that there was a small rodent in the tent (he gave me a hand measurement) at which point we both turned over and went back to sleep. In the morning we found out Frederick was having a nightmare that a bulldozer with spikes was about to plow the tent over.”

Julia has high hopes for the 2011 team, as she believes they have amazing energy. She reconfirms, “The Business Division has been able to make all the dreams I had for the team come alive. It’s incredibly hard to make time for business initiatives while still making sure the right resources are going to the core of the team – building the actual car. It is so nice to see that everything I worked so hard for has not only been sustained, but has been taken to the next level.”

Overall, Julia’s experience on the team has been more than positive as she ends by confessing, “Solar car was the reason I got up in the morning. I miss being part of something so incredible and believing in something so much that you will sacrifice everything for it. I miss the challenge and how much I grew as a person every day. I miss the engineers explaining their systems to me. I miss the jokes and the quote wall. And I miss feeling so invincible and that anything is possible.”

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Furqan Nazeeri believes that joining the solar car team in the fall of 1990 is one of the best decisions he has made in his lifetime.  Nazeeri was able to see the first Michigan team win the inaugural Sunrayce USA in 1990. Afterwards, he became a part of the “Maize & Blue” generation, working for three years to build a competitive solar car as the Project Manager, and leading the team to a victory in the 1993 Sunrayce.

Beginning his career as an engineer, Furqan was also the project manager of REVA, one of the world’s largest dealers of electric passenger vehicles. With more than 15 years of experience building and managing high growth software companies, Furqan is currently a Partner at the extensionEngine. In addition to being the founder or co-founder of three high-tech startups, Furqan gave a speech at the Center For Entrepreneurship discussing his success in entrepreneurship and it’s correlation with being on the solar car team.

One of his favorite memories was when the team crossed the finish line of Sunrayce 1993.  Furqan declared, “Three years earlier I had seen pictures of the 1990 team doing the same thing as they won GM Sunrayce USA.  In the time between, I had obsessed almost every hour of every day about how to achieve that same feat.  Giving so much to achieve a goal and to actually reach it was amazing.”

When thinking back about solar car, Furqan misses his teammates more than anything else.  He stated, “Never before and never since have I been able to be part of a team that is both so talented and so committed.  That sounds like a crazy way to describe a group of 20-somethings, but it’s true.”

But overall, Furqan cannot be more proud of the current 2011 team.  Still involved with the team as one of our top supporters, he believes that within the 20 years of solar car racing he has seen, the 2011 Michigan team is the best yet.

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From 2004-2008, Jeff Ferman worked his way through each of the divisions on the team. Starting as a strategist, he moved onto work in operations, engineering, and business in 2005.  During the 2007 race Ferman was the head strategist and in 2008 he was the race manager.

Throughout his time with the team, one of Ferman’s favorite memories happened during 2007 when the car underwent a horrendous crash.  “It was heartbreaking. But ten minutes later we were all working on the car, figuring out what we could do. Everyone instantly jumped in, trying to keep things moving and everyone safe.”

The immense amount of teamwork is what Ferman misses most about being on the team.  “I miss the ‘coming togetherness’. For a while it doesn’t mesh. You spend weeks if not months working together in separate divisions without a connection.  But, at some point it snaps in place, everyone comes together and all of a sudden they just trust each other.  You see this team just operate quickly and efficiently; everyone just knows what to do even without talking.”

Currently, Ferman is employed at Microsoft where he works within program management. Starting with software development, Ferman switched into program management where he was able to apply the skills he developed from being on the team to the job.  Ferman has learned to manage a team of people and a project – knowledge he can apply to situations at the workplace and in real world applications.

Even after his time working on the team, Ferman continues his involvement as he videotaped the 2009 race – a memory that he enjoyed thoroughly.  It was the first time Ferman was able to sit back and just trust the people working as he recorded the memories.  “It was hard to look through the camera and not just the car because you’re watching as the car you helped built race at 60 miles an hour. It was great being there without having any stress.”

As far as the new 2011 team goes, Ferman has been impressed with how much lighter the upper is.  “It is exciting to see the iterations change four cars later with new people and new ideas.  When I first joined there was barely any carryover in software or design and the previous years didn’t even talk to each other.  Now, the software, code, and expertise is passed down and evolves instead of being reused. This is especially true with the fairings; they are much better than in 2005 when we didn’t have a clue with what we were doing.”

But, when looking back on everything, Ferman stated, “Being on the Solar Car team was the best experience I had in college.  The friends and experiences are just unforgettable.”

 

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There are former Solar Car members all over the country, quietly doing awesome things.  The blog aims to capture some of their stories over the next few weeks.  If you’re a Solar Car alumni, fill us in about what you’ve been doing since you left the team, and we’ll share your story with everyone through the blog.  The team is always curious about where our predecessors ended up, so send us an email at solarcar@umich.edu.  One of our Solar Car alumni, Larry Page, is set to take over as Google’s CEO next month.  This article even mentions his ties to Solar Car.  Good luck Larry!

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Yesterday Continuum traveled to Grand Rapids to participate in a Michigan Alumni gathering at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. The car was placed outside of the museum, where we spoke with people walking into the event and anyone else who passed by the Art Museum.

We had a lot of fun talking with alumni and hearing about the adventures they had when they were students at Michigan. We also had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with President Mary Sue Coleman again.

Super Fans and friends of Chuck Hutchins: (From left to right) Carl Walker, Esther Padnos, Seymour Padnos, and Dorothy Walker

Our little friends, Jackson and Porter, speak with Steve Hechtman
(They were ready to drive!)

Continuum outside of the Grand Rapids Art Museum