The Iowa Stater
May 2001
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Test for thinner, lighter PrISUm Odyssey begins July 15
When you do well in a car race, you don't need an overhaul. That's the cue
taken by the team building Iowa State's next solar car, PrISUm Odyssey.
They'll race the car in the American Solar Challenge, a Chicago to Los
Angeles race, July 15-25. For the new car, students merely tweaked the
design of its predecessor, which finished fifth in the rain-soaked Sunrayce
99. PrISUm Odyssey will have the same airfoil design as the old, but the new car's shell will be thinner by two inches. The almost imperceptible change could have a big impact on the car's aerodynamics. The driver, who now has to drive lying down, will feel the difference.
Odyssey will have about 3,000 solar cells, more than four times the number of cells on the previous car. The new solar cells are smaller and can be contoured over the rounder corners of the shell.
The former car relied on nine lead-acid batteries weighing 330 pounds, roughly a third of the car's weight. Odyssey will deploy lithium-polymer batteries, the same batteries used in laptop computers. The batteries, all 120 of them, weigh just 65 pounds.
But the greatest challenge isn't what team members can come up with in the garage of the Old Sweeney building. It will be how their car—and they—perform on the road.
"It takes a challenge like racing a solar car across a continent before you realize what it means to be a part of a team," says Team PrISUm director Nick Mohr, Bettendorf. "There's no way to teach that without doing it."