Light Brigade : Monrovia Man Charges Up an Entry in Australia’s 1,950-Mile Solar Car Race

When a light rain forced Arthur Boyt to park his solar-powered car on the shoulder of an Arizona freeway, he was not immediately concerned.

Then, a “black wall of water and wind” flipped the 400-pound car upside-down, tossed it into a ditch 50 feet away and submerged it in water and mud.

Boyt’s team spent four days getting the little car running again before it could complete its 1984 journey from San Diego to Jacksonville, Fla. The trip took 45 days and marked the first time that a solar-powered car had been driven across the United States.

Boyt is fervently hoping that he will not encounter similar weather this November when he takes a new car to Australia to join at least 17 others in the longest solar-powered auto race ever: a 1,950-mile trip from Darwin to Adelaide.

Prize Is Knowledge

There will be no cash prize for the victor, only a $20,000 gold and silver trophy. Sponsors, though, hope the real prize will be greatly increased knowledge about the technologies that may eventually find their way into electric cars.

“Whether a car is solar-powered or battery-powered, the bottom line is low power,” said Paul MacReady of Monrovia’s AeroVironment Inc. He said that such a car is limited by the number of batteries or solar cells it can carry to drive the electric motor.

MacReady, also building a car for the race, knows about low-power vehicles. He built the first successful human-powered airplane, the first human-powered plane to cross the English Channel, and the first solar-powered plane.

“The need to get by on low power really focuses you on low wind resistance, low drag on the wheels, an efficient transmission for power conversion, and so on,” MacReady said.

Because of restrictions on the size of the solar panels they can carry, most of the cars in the Australian race will use one-horsepower electric motors. These produce “about the amount of energy an athletic cyclist could apply to the wheels,” said Boyt, who teaches solar energy at tiny Crowder College in Neosho, Mo.

The three-wheeled vehicle Boyt ran in 1984 was built largely from off-the-shelf components. It had no streamlining and was much heavier than he desired, so he had to be content to motor along the shoulders of Interstates 8 and 10 at a sedate 15 m.p.h.

The race cars, in contrast, will be built of lightweight materials similar to those used in human-powered aircraft. Their streamlining has been extensively tested in wind tunnels, and they will run with specially designed low-friction transmissions, bearings and wheels.

Some of the participants in the trans-Australian race are predicting average speeds of more than 45 m.p.h, three times faster than Boyt’s first car.

The route is a narrow blacktop highway that is the only direct link between Darwin in the north and Adelaide in the south. It is heavily traveled by triple-trailered “road trains” that cruise at speeds of 70 to 80 m.p.h. Entrants will have to prove that their 400- to 700-pound vehicles won’t literally be blown off the road by the trucks.

Temperatures in the rugged Australian outback at that time of year are frequently over 100 degrees with 90% humidity, and temperatures inside the cars will be higher still because they are sealed to reduce drag. The cars will race from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with drivers pulling off the road to camp out wherever the cars happen to be at the end of the day.

Three U.S. teams have entered the race, and it appears to be a mismatch. General Motors Corp. has hired MacReady to coordinate its effort and is calling in experts from throughout its corporate empire to help. The company is rumored to be spending more than $1.5 million on the project.

‘Protecting Ourselves’

“We’re protecting ourselves from any turn in the marketplace by developing technology for electric cars,” said GM spokesman J. Bruce McCristal. “Who knows what the price of gas will be by the year 2000?”

MacReady, whose company designs wind- and water-powered energy systems and manufactures air pollution monitoring equipment, is constructing the Sunraycer at his corporate development center in Simi Valley. He hopes to begin testing it next month at a GM track in Mesa, Ariz.

Los Angeles-based John Paul Mitchell Hair Care Systems is sponsoring a $200,000 car built by Hawaiian environmentalist and solar researcher Jonathon Tennyson. But Tennyson is not concerned about GM’s spending. “If we had spent $2 million, we couldn’t have done much better,” he said.

Boyt is spending only $60,000 in donations, but he is confident nonetheless.

“I don’t believe the fastest car will win; there will be an element of luck because of the distance of the race and the . . . weather conditions,” he said.

Other entrants--companies, universities, or private individuals--will come from Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Pakistan and the United Kingdom. Ford Motor Co. of Australia is the best known of them.

The race is the brainchild of Danish-born adventurer Hans Tholstrup. With Australian racing driver Larry Perkins, Tholstrup drove a solar car that “looked like an upside-down bathtub on bicycle wheels” on the west-east route from Perth to Sydney in 1982. The 2,540-mile trip took 20 days and “proved that men could be transported by solar power,” he said.

The rules leave a lot of room for variation in design. GM’s Sunraycer looks like a flat-bottomed teardrop. The car is so streamlined, MacReady said, that “If you are standing right on the side of the road and it goes past you at 50 m.p.h., you won’t feel any wind from it.”

Otherwise he is reluctant to disclose details of the car’s capabilities. Its weight: “About 20% more than we wish.” Its speed: “Faster than the competition.”