The University of Michigan has one of the most successful solar car teams in the world. Its later racer Momentum is already on our site. Maize & Blue, named after the university’s colours, is one of the cars that made the team famous.
The project took three years, from October 1990 to December 1993. At its peak several hundred students from all fields worked on it, at least 260 in total, and they invested about 70,000 hours of work. One of them was Larry Page, who later co-founded Google; he helped in the early phase. The design was developed with CATIA, the same CAD software used for the Boeing 777. Before building the car, the team tested quarter-scale foam models in the university’s wind tunnel and later the full car in Lockheed’s wind tunnel in Atlanta.
The result was a four-wheeled car with a drag coefficient of only 0.115. The array of 7,615 BP Saturn monocrystalline cells delivered about 1,300 W peak, and a custom Magnetek brushless motor (1.8 kW rated, 3.7 kW peak) drove the rear wheel by chain. The seat was a nylon mesh weighing less than 1.5 kg. In Sunrayce 93, a 1,100-mile race from Texas to Minnesota, Maize & Blue was the only car to finish a rainy day under its own power, and it won the race overall at an average of 27.3 mph (44 km/h).
For the 1993 World Solar Challenge the team swapped the lead-acid batteries for lighter silver-zinc batteries and fitted about 40% of the array with high-efficiency cells from Professor Martin Green of UNSW. A production flaw kept the new cells from reaching full power, and the car finished 11th. Today Maize & Blue is on permanent display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Its design descended from GM’s Sunraycer.
Technical data
| Builder | University of Michigan Solar Car Team (USA) |
|---|---|
| Years | 1990–1993 |
| Size | 5.75 × 2.0 × 1.1 m, four wheels |
| Weight | 358 kg without driver |
| Aerodynamics | Cd 0.115, CdA 0.133 m² |
| Solar | 7,615 BP Saturn cells, ~1,300 W peak, 8 AERL MPPTs |
| Motor | Magnetek brushless DC, 1.8 kW rated / 3.7 kW peak |
| Battery | Lead-acid 4.8 kWh (Sunrayce), silver-zinc (WSC) |
| Results | Sunrayce 93 winner; WSC 1993: 11th |
Photos
- Top photo: F. Nazeeri / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Maize & Blue wins Sunrayce 93 in Minneapolis. Photo: Fnazeeri at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Full-scale wind tunnel test at Lockheed in Atlanta, May 1993… Photo: Fnazeeri at English Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0