Stanford Luminos – 10,000 Safe Miles and 4th in the World

The Stanford Solar Car Project has built solar cars since 1986, and it is proud of one rule: it is completely student-run. Faculty members help with fundraising and advice, but every design and race decision is made by students. Any Stanford student can join.

The team’s eleventh car, Luminos, was unveiled in the summer of 2013. Before shipping it to Australia, the students focused on reliability and drove it 10,000 miles without a safety incident. It paid off: in the Challenger class of the 2013 World Solar Challenge, Luminos finished 4th, the best result of any team made up of undergraduates.

Luminos built on its predecessor Xenith (2011), a 170 kg car with three-wheel steering, glass-protected solar panels and a chassis only 10 cm thick, made of carbon fibre, titanium and aluminium. Xenith could cruise at about 88 km/h on solar power alone. The team also wrote software to model sunlight and shadows along the race route to plan its strategy.

After Luminos came Arctan (2015), designed to be a little more aerodynamic while staying just as robust, and Sundae (2017). If you like to compare: on the same 2013 roads the Dutch Stella family cars started their run of Cruiser class wins, and Australia’s Sunswift team was preparing its record cars.

Technical data

Photos

• Top photo: Guillermogomez701 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Luminos racing through the Australian outback in 2013. Photo: Mark Shwartz / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
• Rolling through a town during the World Solar Challenge. Photo: Mark Shwartz / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
• Its predecessor Xenith (2011) during test runs in California… Photo: Sam D'Amico / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Sources

• Wikipedia: Stanford Solar Car Project
• Wikipedia (DE): Liste von Solarfahrzeugen (Xenith)