WSC Results (2)

The World Solar Challenge has finally released official results of the race (for Challengers, Cruisers, and Adventure class), and the chart below shows the breakdown of scores for the top five Cruiser class cars. As in my 2013 version of this chart, each coloured left-hand-side bar is the sum of the other four bars with the same colour.

The times used for scoring by the WSC are based, as far as I can see, on the time from Darwin to Adelaide (rather than to the so-called “end of timing” point) minus the waiting time at control stops and at Alice Springs. I suspect that Kogakuin might have won had they chosen not to recharge at Alice Springs (which would have slowed them down a little, but would have cost everybody else 7.5 points). As it was, Kogakuin’s speed advantage of 2.7 points almost exactly counterbalanced Eindhoven’s passenger advantage of 2.5 points, leaving practicality to decide the winner.

For comparison, here is the 2013 version of this chart. This year, the external energy use component decreased from 18.9% to 15%, the speed component increased from 56.6% to 70%, the passenger-carrying component decreased slightly from 5.7% to 5%, and the practicality-judging component decreased from 18.9% to 10%

25 thoughts on “WSC Results (2)”

To make the race more a speed race in the Cruiser class WSC could decide to do the Practicality before the start in Darwin. But that may interfere with the rest of the event planning in Adelaide and commercial interests.
It is disappointing that person kms only counts for such a small part, which is very clearly visible in this nice graph.
Interesting to see how WSC will tweak the regulations to promote both Stella Lux / Owl and Sunriser / Eve type of cars. It turned out indeed that the sport cars with the smaller arrays don’t stand a chance without extra charging from the grid.

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Tony on October 29, 2015 at 9:43 pm said:

I would certainly like practicality scoring in Darwin. And I tend to agree on passenger-km too. This year we saw some two-seaters that were never actually intended to carry two people.

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It would’ve been interesting if Kogakuin skipped a charge at Alice Springs. A full charge seems to account for quite a bit of distance, but on the other hand they could’ve charged statically in/on their way to Alice Springs.

Something I hadn’t realised before the final score was revealed; a non-finishing team could’ve won under the current rules if they had just a tiny amount of energy storage; enough to make it through scrutineering.

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Tony on November 1, 2015 at 4:50 am said:

The formula in the rules was really intended only for finishing cars. Energy usage should really be scaled by distance travelled, and time taken for a vehicle in a trailer is totally meaningless. As my follow-up post points out, by any reasonable standards, Lodz would be sixth. I hope that the WSC will clarify the scoring of non-finishing cars in 2017. However, the rules do already specify that “Finishing Cruiser Class Teams will be ranked above non-finishing Cruiser Class Teams.”

In 2013, non-finishing Cruisers were simply ranked by number of solar km. Practicality scores were listed, but not times or energy scores, and no total score was calculated.

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