The afternoon of race day 3, and several teams have been struggling. In the Cruisers, Singapore and Sunswift were forced to trailer. On the other hand, Nuon is streaking ahead to the South Australian border, and Michigan might be breaking the “curse of third.”
The map above (click to zoom) shows GPS positions extrapolated using GPS time lag and the average speed since the start of the race (i.e. it’s a best guess for the true position of the car at the indicated time). Adventure-class teams are not shown. The table below shows team numbers, raw road distance from Darwin, average speed, extrapolated road distance, class (or number of seats for Cruiser class), team name, team social media links, and links to pictures or status reports. For a live map of raw GPS data, see the official tracker.
| 3 | 1757.5 km | 80.7 kph | 1758.4 km | C | Nuon       – photo |
| 2 | 1682.8 km | 77.4 kph | 1685.5 km | C | Michigan |
| 21 | 1667 km | 76.6 kph | 1668.9 km | C | Twente – video |
| 10 | 1656.1 km | 76.1 kph | 1657.2 km | C | Tokai |
| 8 | 1626.7 km | 74.8 kph | 1629.6 km | C | Punch – photo |
| 11 | 1493.6 km | 67.1 kph | 1493.7 km | 4 | Bochum |
| 88 | 1487.2 km | 66.9 kph | 1489.9 km | C | Kogakuin – photo |
| 15 | 1487.1 km | 66.8 kph | 1487.7 km | C | WSU – photo |
| 42 | 1485.8 km | 66.8 kph | 1485.8 km | A | TAFE SA – Adventure |
| 40 | 1473.8 km | 66.3 kph | 1476.5 km | 5 | Eindhoven |
| 28 | 1435.3 km | 64.5 kph | 1435.3 km | A | KNUT – Adventure |
| 30 | 1429.8 km | 64.3 kph | 1432.5 km | 2 | Arrow |
| 35 | 1430.4 km | 64.2 kph | 1431.3 km | 2 | HK IVE |
| 75 | 1394.7 km | 62.8 kph | 1394.7 km | A | Sunswift – Adventure |
| 94 | 1394.3 km | 62.6 kph | 1394.3 km | 2 | Minnesota – video |
| 95 | 1359.8 km | 61.4 kph | 1367.4 km | 2 | Apollo |
| 4 | 1364.4 km | 61.3 kph | 1365.5 km | C | Antakari |
| 5 | 1364.2 km | 61.3 kph | 1364.2 km | A | Singapore – Adventure |
| 16 | 1352.2 km | 60.7 kph | 1352.9 km | C | Stanford |
| 77 | 1345 km | 60.4 kph | 1345.6 km | C | Blue Sky |
| 43 | 1320.9 km | 59.4 kph | 1320.9 km | A | ANU – Adventure |
| 25 | 1317 km | 59.2 kph | 1317.9 km | C | Nagoya |
| 46 | 1294.8 km | 58.2 kph | 1296.1 km | C | JU |
| 38 | 1263.4 km | 56.7 kph | 1264 km | C | NWU |
| 70 | 1262.5 km | 56.7 kph | 1263.6 km | C | Aachen – video |
| 32 | 1251.6 km | 56.2 kph | 1253 km | C | Principia |
| 53 | 1228.9 km | 55.2 kph | 1228.9 km | A | Choctaw – Adventure |
| 71 | 1210.3 km | 53.4 kph | 1210.3 km | C | ITU |
| 22 | 1210.3 km | 54.1 kph | 1210.3 km | A | MDH – Adventure |
| 82 | 1169 km | 51.3 kph | 1169.3 km | C | KUST |
| 20 | 1168.2 km | 51.3 kph | 1168.2 km | A | Durham – Adventure |
| 9 | 1160.4 km | 51 kph | 1161.2 km | 4 | PrISUm |
| 49 | 1147.6 km | 50.4 kph | 1147.6 km | A | Siam Tech – Adventure |
| 45 | 1145.9 km | 50.3 kph | 1146.2 km | 5 | Lodz |
| 52 | 1126.3 km | 49.5 kph | 1126.3 km | A | Illini – Adventure |
| 37 | 1124.5 km | 49.4 kph | 1125.3 km | C | Goko |
| 18 | 1118.2 km | 49.2 kph | 1118.2 km | A | EcoPhoton – Adventure |
| 7 | 1069.7 km | 47 kph | 1069.7 km | A | Adelaide – Adventure |
Bochum heading into Alice
Scientific Gems 
Finger crossed for Goko. They have 40 minutes to cover 50km before the control stop closes and they are out.
That’s two fingers crossed
Rough luck for Goko, I think they missed out by about 10 mins. Down to 15 Challegers now.
I didn’t hear or see anything anymore about the groundsheet issues; are they still pending?
Still pending I believe – “due process”
Nagoya fell back quite a bit after their enthusiastic start. Have they been facing any breakdowns or was it reality that struck and left them with low battery levels?
Stanford must have been in some trouble, they are not the team to overextend themselves like that.
Interesting mini battle going on between Kogakuin and WSU.
Really tight between Koga and WSU.
Big day for the multi junction cars today Nuon, Michigan and Punch all made ground on Twente and Tokai. Could be co-incidence of course.
Re Nagoya I think it’s just the limitations of their car, maybe it’s better suited to the track.
Their times behind Nuon at the four control stops they’ve reached 18min, 56mins, 150mins, and 321mins. A steady decline.
Stanford are posting on Instagram only so far.
Hi Tony, is it possible to make that great graph again like you did 2 years ago?
https://scientificgems.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/world-solar-challenge-day-7/
It will show clearly where teams have run into trouble or have been able to keep going and gain advantage.
Working on that
I’m wondering what the tactics are from Bochum.
They are going very fast, they have cleared their troubles and running ahead schedule it seems.
To me the schedule is looking very tight for the Cruisers. I guess Bochum are hoping to be the only team to finish within the window and get a guaranteed win.
Only Eindhoven can spoil that plan but there is no other choice, according to some measures EHV’s car is four times as good as Bochum’s.
Schedule is looking very tight indeed.
I don’t think EHV will lose control over their arrival time gap (unless they have a breakdown).
But i do think that it will be a less than 5 person ride tomorrow (seeing the weather forecast cloudy > rain).
Or the wind is helping them the first leg (North West up to 35km/h) end then losing passengers when it turns South to South East (up to 20 km/h.
If i’m calculating correct there is at least 1 control stop tomorrow.
I’m sure that EHV have enough Pkms in hand to finish the race with a driver only.
I’m also pretty sure that EHV and Bochum, and maybe Arrow, are capable of finishing in time. My reason for saying this is that the best weather is always in the north so it is sensible to try to do the first half of the distance in less than half of the time. Only two teams have managed that(just) and I can only assume that no others were capable.
sorry, should say “only” EHV and Bochum.
I think WSC are keeping a very close eye on Cruisers times. Given past history, they could well think about extending the arrival window if that became necessary.
Reading the latest summary from Dr Snowden it looks like they are getting their excuses ready and preparing the ground for a rule change – “proving to be a tough event, for all classes”. Once again that would be totally unfair on any team that prepared their strategy to suit the original rules ie Kogakuin in 2015.
in reality it is not proving equally tough for all classes – whereas maybe less than 20% of the Cruisers will meet the challenge there are well over 50% of the challengers that could meet theirs.
My mistake, I was thinking that Kogakuin’s practicality score was low enough to lose places but they did, in fact, hang on to second place.
How many % of your batter car you fill by static charging after race day and the next morning before leaving? Or is it almost guaranteed, finish your battery during the day and by the next morning itll be 100%
That’s the million dollar question Frank – the winners will be the teams that know the answer.
Yeah but is there a general idea? Cause Deft said today they “raced to escape the clouds”. Does that mean they will have to go slower tomorrow? as their battery will be more depleted than the chasing pack? Or does this not matter cause essentially everything resets at the end of the day?
It seems extremely unlikely that any team will be able to produce 5kWh in static charging to fill the batteries. The panels on the cars are rated approximately 1000Wp in total.
They might produce 10kWh a day in Australia but in a normal curve which produces 70% in the 5 hours around noon
1 kWh seems most they would be getting after 17:00 and before 8:00 and only if they aim the panels towards the sun.
What I remember from previous editions is that the evening and morning charging will not be enough to top off the batteries. And in the current cloudy conditions (and without the concentrator stands) that will be even less. Really working with your meteo is extremely important now, making sure you are most of the time in the sunny area of a partly cloud covered Stuart Highway. For Nuon to have a solid lead to work with, when speeds and temperatures could be going down in the next 2 days, can be a much needed advantage.
Nuon just explained in their daily update how they were able to monitor realtime where the clouds were moving and sped up to 94kph to stay in the sun, ahead of the clouds most of the time. With that detailed strategy (and a bit of luck I guess) they have also been in the sun during control stops and after 5pm to harvest energy. I think I even heard them say they were able to collect 400W after 5pm today, which may have been unintentionally shared in their enthusiasm.
Yeah they definitely said that at the end of their livestream. Might have been a slip, could have also been intentionally spreading of false data. How large are their battery packs?
Nuna has 20kg batteries according to their website which means either Li-ion or Li-Polymer.
Should be about 5kWh capacity
They have explained it further here:
(video in dutch but shows the Nuna route overlayed on moving weather satellite footage)
Yes, I mention that in my next post. I think Nuon’s superb weather strategy has been the key to building up such a good lead. That doesn’t really surprise me: as cars and simple race team tactics converge in quality, weather strategy was always going to be a big future battleground. In the past, Punch, Michigan, and Twente have all attempted to win in that space; this year Nuon seems to have done it.
Nuon is at 1914 km after day 3 (547 km added)
They were 1267 after day 2 (642 km added)
615 km on day 1
So even though they did well, conditions clearly worse on day 3
My next two posts will have more to say on that.