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NEWS
Successful rolling debut for UNSW Sunswift
High-tech challenger wheeled out for testing, with World Solar Challenge less than a month awayUNSW team Sunswift’s entrant in this year’s World Solar Challenge has made a successful debut in a low-speed testing session on a drag strip at Sydney’s Eastern Creek – just three weeks prior to start date for the race.
While modelling results point to a top speed in the vicinity of 140km/h, this session kept things modest and real with the car, dubbed eVe, not exceeding 100km/h. That’s as it should be for first-time full-scale integration testing, project business manager and photovoltaic engineer Alexander To told motoring.com.au.
“Everything you see here has been tested on the bench, but this is the first time it’s all been bolted together and run as a complete unit,” he said. “It’s the first time eVe has travelled under its own power.”
The purpose of the outing was to test basic motoring functions: forward mobility, turning and braking, checking tolerances for suspension travel and steering, that kind of thing,” Mr To said. “It’s one thing to know all the components work individually, but another to make sure they all keep working when they’ve been screwed together.”
After testing, the team deemed the results promising, albeit for a work in progress. “Yep, it rolls,” Mr To laughed. “The steering and the brakes need a bit of adjustment, but that’s natural. Other than that, we’re on track.”
At the launch in August, the body and drivetrain were together, but the cockpit was still blank space. Here, it was near complete, decked out with two purpose-modified, deep carbon fibre buckets from UK racing seat specialist Tillett, and a removable steering column.
The panel of low-activity instruments – things like the reversing camera and the GPS – will reside in a dash binnacle that’s yet to arrive.
Most of the moment-to-moment gear is mounted on a suede-rimmed F1-like steering wheel. Right and left paddles control throttle and regen braking respectively. Most of the stop/go work is done by either-or motions on the paddles.
Unlike many a consumer EV, Sunswift’s car doesn’t go into regen automatically on deceleration – releasing the throttle paddle simply lets it coast. The left paddle redirects the torque output of the two rear wheel motors away from the road and towards the generators; regen and braking vary according to how hard the driver depresses it.
The car also has a brake pedal, controlling conventional discs on the front wheels.
For other essential and moment-to-moment functions, the tiller integrates a silicon circuit beneath a top layer featuring a single digital readout and a bunch of button switches. Designer Carson Au has built a number of dummy switches into this first iteration, allowing for functional expansion in the future.
In eVe, the live switches allow the driver to scroll through regularly changing fields, inputting new values, mainly to update the cruise control parameters.
Cruise is a critical strategic component in the Challenge. Throughout the race the driver will constantly fine-tune it according to instructions from a support vehicle travelling ahead, gathering data on temperature and other climatic elements, topography and road conditions.
“We’re running a very tight strategy on how we’ll complete the race,” suspension engineer Robyn Hutchinson told motoring.com.au. “Those values plus available UV solar radiation, how much power’s in our battery and the efficiency level our drivetrain is running at, right down to the rolling resistance of the tyres, the aerodynamic drag – it will all have an effect on the way we run it.”
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Written byJeremy Bass
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