Solar Eagle II – Cal State LA’s Pole-Position Racer

California loves its cars, and in the early 1990s a team at California State University, Los Angeles proved that it could love solar cars too. After their first Solar Eagle took fourth place in the 1990 GM Sunrayce, the students, faculty and staff built a lighter and smarter successor: Solar Eagle II.

The car is about 4.9 m long and 1.9 m wide and weighs only about 163 kg (360 lb) without driver and batteries. A welded aluminium space frame is stiffened by a carbon-fibre battery box and underbody pan, and the body is carbon fibre over a Rohacell foam core. The array uses 754 BP Saturn monocrystalline cells on top plus 824 quarter-size cells on the sides to catch low sun. Solar Eagle II reaches 100 km/h and can travel up to 480 km on a sunny day.

In June 1993 the car qualified fastest and started Sunrayce 93, a 1,000-mile race from Dallas, Texas to Minneapolis, Minnesota, from pole position. It finished third, ahead of 33 other universities, behind Michigan’s Maize & Blue and Cal Poly Pomona. The judges also gave the team awards for chassis design, propulsion and aerodynamics. In November 1993 Solar Eagle II crossed Australia in the World Solar Challenge and placed 13th out of 54 cars.

The story did not end there: its successor Solar Eagle III won Sunrayce 97 at a record average of 69.67 km/h. Solar Eagle II is now on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, a good stop if you want to see a 1990s solar racer up close. Its American rivals of the time include GM’s Sunraycer and the later Momentum.

Technical data

Photos

• Top photo: Mike-obermeyer / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Solar Eagle II on display at the California Science Center i… Photo: BeeboMan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
• At the finish of the 1993 World Solar Challenge in Australia… Photo: Mike-obermeyer / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
• The Cal State LA team with car number 19. Photo: Mike-obermeyer / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Sources

• Wikipedia: Cal State LA Solar Car Team