If you’re looking for something to do this Saturday afternoon, and you’re interested in one of the coolest engineering student groups at Stanford, you can:

1. Show up and say hi at our shop here at noon.

2. Come check us out at the SURPS research fair near tressider from 1-3pm

3. Come by the shop from 4pm  onwards.

We’re looking forward to meeting you all!

Here is the first of a series of shots that Nathan took at the Main Quad.

And here are a bunch of additional photos from our spring break test drive weekend.

Volkswagen Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, CA April 21-22

The Volkswagen Sea Otter Classic is a four-day weekend of cycling races, an expo, and an outdoor sports festival that welcomes nearly 10,000 athletes and 50,000 race fans and other bicycle enthusiasts. Our team will have Xenith in display along with Volkwasgen’s display at the event. Volkswagen is the title sponsor of the 2012 Volkswagen Sea Otter Classic. Come by the VW pavilion in the center of the expo to see Xenith and our team. Volkswagen’s display is part of VW’s Think Blue initiative.

Apogee at Stanford Admit Weekend Activities Fair in White Plaza April 27th 11am-1pm

If you are a ProFro or any other Stanford affiliate you should check out our team during the Stanford Admit Weekend. There will be a ton of prospective freshmen touring the campus this weekend, and we plan to put Apogee on display.

Xenith at Engineering Admit Weekend Activities Fair at Huang April 27th 1-3pm

We will have another team over at the Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center for the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Fair. We will be targeting prospective engineering majors and anyone else who wants to join the project to design and build our next car. If you are a ProFro or any other student and you want to join visit our recruiting page to sign up for our team.

 Xenith at the Bay Area Maker Faire on May 19-20

The team will bring Xenith to the 2012 Maker Faire. Maker Faire is sort of a huge science fair crossed with a county fair. It is a great event for families, hobbyists, engineers, and tech enthusiasts to see a ton of the neat projects that people throughout the Bay Area are designing and building. The event will be in San Mateo and there should be well over 100,000 attendees. Here is an article about our team with Maker Faire from last year. If you haven’t seen Xenith in person this would be a great event to attend.

Apogee at TEDxStanford on May 19

Our team is excited to announce that we are partnering with the directors of the inaugural TEDxStanford this spring. If you have never seen a TED talk you are truly missing out on some of the brightest speakers of the decade. TEDxStanford will be an independently organized event held at the Cemex Auditorium in the Graduate School of Business. Tickets will be available at the TEDxStanford website. Our team will be presenting Apogee along with some of Stanford’s other cutting edge automotive research projects.

Valid California license plate? Check.

As a freshman on the team, I had no idea what an actual race looked like or how a team prepared for a race, but I was curious to find out. One aspect that surprised me was the amount of work that went into packing for a race; the packing list for the 2011 World Solar Challenge is about as thick as a paperback book. Though the packing list for the test drive was much shorter, packing was still time consuming because no one person knows where everything is (for example, there may or may not be a four foot gas cylinder hidden somewhere in the shop). By the end of packing, I learned that tape lived in the “Dumbledore” box and that fairings should be wrapped in tarp to protect them.

The first group left Stanford bright and early Friday morning with trailer in tow. We spent the long drive napping and generally recovering from exams. When we arrived, we were surrounded by green fields on all sides and pollinating BEES! Unpacking and setting up was an interesting experience; it turns out that bees love our fluorescent pink and orange safety vests (as well as getting stuck in hair)!

Putting on the wheel fairings.

Considering that the first group consisted of mostly new members, the first day of testing went surprisingly smoothly and was a great learning experience. The solar car attracted quite a bit of attention (even from a curious cop) as it cruised down the highway. Even in the middle of nowhere, there is no shortage of people with camera-phones! I quickly learned that safety was a top priority—hence the safety vests, traffic cones, flag waving, and the caravan (more on that later). With the sun low in the horizon, we packed up after a successful day of gathering data.

Not even bees can stop Carol!

At night, we met up with the second group at an RV park. In the middle of Fresno, we set up our tent city by smartphone light. With the battery pack plugged in and charging, the twenty or so of us curled up and slept through the night.

During the second day of testing, we had enough vehicles to form a caravan. In a real race, a caravan of vehicles surrounds the solar car. The scout travels far in front and is responsible for clearing road kill, relaying back road conditions up the route, and finding a campsite at dusk. The lead travels in front of the solar car and relays more immediate traffic conditions to the solar car like approaching stop signs or even kangaroos. Chase defends the solar car’s rear from passing vehicles like road trains and processes the solar car’s telemetry data.

The chase car protects the solar car even off the road.

We only had a weekend to test drive our car so we were focused on gathering as much data as possible. Thanks to the telemetry system on the solar car, anemometer on the van, and GPS, we can see how efficiency is affected by different tires while correcting for different wind speeds and elevations.

Solar car taking a break from testing.

With only a few more hours of daylight left, we decided to test out a new cruise control algorithm. Previously, the team used the motor controller’s built-in cruise control. The old cruise control was too aggressive; when it detected a drop in speed, it would overcompensate. This resulted in periodic current spikes when cruise was engaged.

Programmers in action

Programming the new cruise control would be easy, but tuning the constants would be difficult without live data. Thanks to some awesome hacking of the telemetry team, we were able to see live cruise control data in less than an hour!

With telemetry data, it is easy to see how well cruise control is performing and what parameters need to be tweaked.

Preparing to test the new cruise control on the road for the first time.

With the sun setting and rain clouds rolling in, it was time to pack up and head back to Stanford. On the trip back, we learned that gas stations were definitely NOT designed for solar car teams with enormous trailers. All in all, my first test drive was a fantastic experience and I hope to be around for many more!

This last quarter also brought a number of new and renewed sponsorships for our project. Our group received support from some of our old sponsors like VW and the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Stanford, Harry Elam. Plus, we had first time donations from Card Hub, Hyperworks, and CJ Environmental.

Here are more of the team’s first supporters going into our 2012-2013 build cycle.

Platinum Level Sponsors:

During the last two years, Volkswagen has been an amazing supporter for our group. Volkswagen Group of America and Volkswagen Group of Australia have helped our group by providing us a combination of funding, support vehicles, and logistical assistance. Our team used a Volkswagen Touareg, courtesy of VW, while we were constructing Xenith to pick up parts and supplies all over the Bay Area. VW Group of Australia and VW Group of America partnered to provide our team with a fleet of VW vehicles to use to escort our solar car and to transport our team during the World Solar Challenge in Australia. Volkswagen Group of America and the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab have provided our team with funding to build our vehicles. And Volkswagen has helped us secure key sponsorships such as our Panasonic batteries.

Our team is grateful for VW’s support. We have enjoyed the Touareg, Golf, Amarok Trendline, T5 Crew Van, and TDI320 Caddy Maxi that we have used over the last two years. They have completely fit the practical needs of our group while still being a blast to drive.

Volkswagen renewed their support for our team this past quarter, and our team looks forward to working with Volkswagen in the upcoming two years as we build our next solar car for the 2013 World Solar Challenge.

Gold Level Sponsors:

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Harry Elam: The Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE) serves as the primary conduit for faculty interested in furthering their interaction with undergraduates, developing innovative curriculum and pedagogy, and discovering ways in which working with undergraduates can enrich their own research agendas at Stanford. Many of the VPUE’s programs at Stanford such as the Bing Overseas Studies Program, Introsems, Structured Liberal Education, research grants, and and Stanford Introductory Seminars are the highlights of the Stanford undergraduate experience. The VPUE’s commitment to these fun and enriching student programs and groups like the Stanford Solar Car Project highlight Stanford’s dedication to helping students to achieve their intellectual ambitions as undergraduates.

The Stanford Solar Car Project appreciates the VPUE’s support and we are excited to continue providing challenging and enriching hands on engineering and business management experiences for Stanford undergraduates.

Silver Level Sponsors:

Hyperworks recently made a software donation to our team to support our composites team. During the design process for our next solar car we will be using Hyperworks’ composite finite element analysis software to model our proposed carbon fiber composite chassis and aerobody designs. We hope to take advantage of Hyperworks’s efficient programs to analyze and optimize our carbon fiber layup. Forest, our new composites lead is already at work learning how to use our exciting new software so that our next car will be neither overbuilt nor prone to failure. Xenith’s carbon fiber monocoque chassis has shown no signs of damage. However, we know that with composite FEA software we could have built a car that was even lighter than Xenith, a 380lb car, while still being sufficiently safe and strong. Hyperworks will make a big difference in our teams upcoming composite design.

Friend Level Sponsors:

CardHub.com is one of our team’s new Friend Level Sponsors.  Card Hub is a credit card comparison website, helping consumers compare over 1,000 credit card offers to find the one for their particular needs.  Not only does Card Hub also boast an extensive credit card education center, but it operates the Web’s largest gift card exchange as well, allowing people to sell unwanted gift cards and buy gift cards at a discount.

CJ Environmental provides precious metal refining, electronic scrap refining services, and dental scrap refining services for industry and the general public. Catering to customers since 1975, CJ Environmental has a long history and an international reputation in the precious metal community. CJ Environmental has the facilities to recycle and refine PCBs, IC chips, precious metals, gold crowns and much more.