Gadgetory

I'm Seamus burnt foreseen ed and we are here with an Australian University team getting ready to break a world electric car speed record our solar car here it has a top speed of 140 kilometres an hour it has a range of 800 kilometers and on a rainy day with no solar power it has a range of 500 kilometers in 2007 the team broke the transcontinental record from the trip from Perth to Sydney and in 2011 the car previous to this one broke Guinness world record for the fastest solar car hitting a top speed of 88 kilometres an hour the University of New South Wales Sun Swift team is Australia's leading solar racing team they're going for a new world record of the highest average speed over 500 kilometers now for this race they won't be switching on the solar panels it will just be an energy race based on a battery charge I've also had a chance to get in and feel what it's like to drive this solar car from my experience in the car you can see why it needs a lot of work to make it street-legal you have to cross your legs in order to get your foot to the mechanical brake and all of the main controls are up on the steering column it's difficult to get in and out but this is the kind of challenge that is a lot easier than everything else they've done to build this car so far the efficiency of our car is quite impressive when you're travelling on the freeway you know freeway speeds 100 110 kilometres an hour you're looking at the car using the equivalent power as a 4 slice toaster you'd find in your kitchen in terms of the motors we have on the car their efficiency is up to 97% which is how we improve the overall efficiency of the car and maintain our high speeds another big part of conserving energy and making use of our energy is the regenerative braking systems we have in the car where we can get up to 80 percent of the power back when we brake the two biggest concerns people have with solar and electric cars are that they don't travel very fast and that B they don't travel very far so this is really about curing people's fear of the lack of speed curing their ranging and kind of showing that this car is not only quick and can travel quite far but it's really the best of both worlds so we can travel at high speeds for long distances which is really what everyone wants