As Sepp Herberger famously said, “Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel.” With the 2015 World Solar Challenge well and truly over, solar car teams around the world are beginning to recruit the people who will build and race their 2017 car. These teams include Nuon, Twente, Eindhoven, Stanford, Punch Powertrain (Belgium), ITS (Turkey), and EcoPhoton (Malaysia). There is also a new German team from Aachen.
Nuon is also acquiring a new flightcase for their car, to replace the one they used in 2015. I’ll be very interested to see what the contents of that case will be in 2017!
Here in Australia, Clenergy Team Arrow is considering switching to the Cruiser class in 2017, while Flinders University will enter for the first time. In Turkey, Sakarya University (SAITEM), who competed in the WSC in 2009 and 2011, are planning to return.
In Chile, things are heating up for the Carrera Solar Atacama in April. Most teams are South American, but Onda Solare is making the trip from Italy to compete. I hope that the event is a great success!