| HP was the sponsor of the winner and the runner-up in this year’s Panasonic World Solar Challenge, a design challenge and an endurance race for solar-powered cars across the Australian continent. |
| The Dutch Nuon Solar team won the race with their solar car, the Nuna 4. The team members are students of Delft University of Technology. Previous teams from the university also won the Challenge in 2001, 2003 and 2005 with record-breaking finishing times. A Belgian team from the University of Leuven took second place, racing their solar car, the Umicar Infinity. |
| HP provided IT equipment, including notebook PCs, workstations and other accessories that supported the teams in the design and testing stages as well as during the race. |
| Two new design requirements in particular posed a design challenge for this year’s teams. For the first time, drivers needed to be able to enter and exit the vehicles without assistance and drivers also had to be seated upright. As a result, many teams that had taken part in the Challenge in previous years had to undertake a major re-design of their race car. |
| The cars are powered by electric engines that are fed by photovoltaic or solar cells placed on the outside panelling of the cars. To achieve maximum energy efficiency, the strength of the various parts and the cars as a whole was simulated on HP workstations. These workstations are of great value for real-time calculations, based on a model of the car in motion. |
| The winning team’s car, the Nuna 4 only weighs 200kg (440 lbs), whereas the runner-up, the Umicar Infinity weighs just 185kg (407 lbs). |
| During the race, HP notebook PCs were used for real-time communication between the drivers and the team cars that followed. The teams also used the HP notebooks to devise and constantly re-calculate their driving strategy, taking into account external factors such as changing weather conditions. |
The Panasonic World Solar challenge has been held every two years since 1987 and requires participating teams to design and build a car that will travel the 3,000 kilometre journey  (1,875 miles) across Australia from Darwin, in the North, to Adelaide in the South. The route mostly uses public roads, which have a speed limit of 100km/h (just over 62 mph). The challenge of the race lies in managing an optimum conversion of electricity generated through solar energy into travelling speeds over the total distance. |
| The challenge is open to teams from private sector organisations, universities, or simply private individuals. Driving is shared by a team of a minimum of two and a maximum of four drivers per car. |
| All competing cars started off in Darwin on October 21st at 8.00hrs local time. The race ended when the Nuna 4 reached the finishing line in Adelaide on October 25th. Each day of racing, the cars started out at 8.00hrs local time and stopped at 17.00 hrs at the point they had reached. |
| Our support for these two student teams in the Panasonic World Solar Challenge is part of our efforts to support technology innovation that can contribute to combating the effects of climate change. Our Design for the Environment programme means that we incorporate environmental considerations into our product designs, making products as energy efficient as possible, making them easier to recycle and minimising the hazardous materials used in our products. |
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Global Citizenship Reports 2006 |
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