Solaride finished third in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge

The Estonian solar car team Solaride won third place in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge in Australia at the end of October and got a special award for best performance in technical inspection.

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Solaride competed in the cruiser class, in which a total of eight teams were competing. On the fourth day of the race, all the cruiser teams dropped out of the competition due to difficult weather conditions and reduced charging capacity resulting from temperature. Thus, none of the cruiser cars made it to the next checkpoint and had to be towed in by trailer. As all cars in this class needed additional charging, the decision was made to score points based on the first completed stage. So Solaris was back in the competition and finished the challenge in third place.

The University of Tartu students in the Solaride team in Australia included Ardo Tiits from the Institute of Physics, Armin Mere, Artur Salumäe and Kristjan Kleimann from the Institute of Technology, Herbert Konnula and Johan Hollak from the Institute of Computer Science, Helina Hansar from the Institute of Social Studies, and Karl-Tanel Paes from the School of Economics and Business Administration. Since the start of the project, 50 students of the University of Tartu have contributed to the development of the solar car.

The title of the world champion went to the Sunswift Racing team from Australia and the University of Minnesota team. Team Solaride will get back to Estonia on 5 November at 18.

Solaride is an educational and collaborative project that started at the initiative of the University of Tartu students and led to the construction of the first solar car in the Baltics. The project’s major sponsors are the University of Tartu and Tallinn University of Technology.