Midwestern Solar Challenge

On June 3, two of the top Cruiser-class solar cars held a Midwestern Solar Challenge, racing south from St Paul, MN to Ames, IA. The teams were:

• 9: Iowa State University (PrISUm) 
• 94/35: University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project 

Race news

• Original route
• Video just before start of race
• Oops! Discovering that Highway MN 3 is closed – switching to MN 55E, US 52S, and 47 (Northfield Blvd)
• Checkpoint
• Both cars finish at the same time

Scoring

Here is my (totally informal) scoring of the race (see the chart below):

• Person-kilometres is the race distance times the average number of people carried (which I believe was 4 for PrISUm and 2 for UMNSVP). The first coloured bar shows this, scaled so that 100% is the highest value.
• Energy input is the number of charges (1, in this case) times battery size. The second coloured bar shows this, scaled so that 100% is the highest value (this bar points downward, because smaller is better).
• The third coloured bar shows the ratio of these numbers, scaled so that 80% is the highest ratio.
• We add on (in grey) the practicality scores (I’m estimating 9 for PrISUm and 7 for UMNSVP), scaled so that 20% is the highest practicality.
• This gives final scores of 100 for PrISUm and 82 for UMNSVP. Congratulations, PrISUm!
• But will PrISUm still have the advantage when it needs to carry passengers uphill?

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