our next project

During summer 2007, the SEVT has been working hard on the design of our next vehicle, currently named "Eleanor." With Eleanor, we are aiming to improve upon the technology used in Tesseract. Eleanor's design is based around the regulations for our upcoming races.
Several of the most drastic changes are detailed below:

Seating angle

In previous years, solar car drivers have had to lay down in their vehicles to drive. This helped to minimize the thickness of the cars, which lowered the aerodynamic drag. To bring solar cars closer to commercial passenger cars, a new regulation requires that the driver is seated upright: the seat back must be less than 27 degrees away from vertical. The SEVT has had to rethink the shape of the aerodynamic car body and the layout of items within the car in order to comply with the new rules.

Steering wheel

Eleanor's steering system, like Tesseract's, will use a rack-and-pinion steering mechanism to connect the driver input to the wheels. But while Tesseract's drivers used handlebars to steer, Eleanor will feature a conventional circular steering wheel.

Parking Brake

In the past, the SEVT has simply chocked the wheels to keep vehicles in place when stopped. This year we will be developing a mechanical parking brake that can be operated by the driver. The driver will be able to bring the car to a stop, engage the parking brake and then exit the vehicle without waiting for other team members to stabilize the car with chalks.