University of Michigan’s 5th Consecutive Solar Car Championship

Within seven days, a University of Michigan team raced 1722 miles over eight states to win their 8^th American Solar Car Challenge. Excluding breaks, the total trip took just about 41.5 hours. Even more impressive was that their nearest competitor, University of Minnesota, took a total of 4 hours longer to finish the race over the five segments.

To help with the design of the solar car, U of M used Siemens product lifecycle management (PLM) software. The team started using the software a year ago and will now pivot their success using it into a four wheeled car for the World Solar Challenge in Australia.

“As our fifth straight national championship, this is a huge win for our team, and it’s a powerful testament to the value of Siemens’ PLM software … We realize that to win the global solar challenge, we need to move from understanding the performance of individual components of the vehicle to understand how the entire vehicle works as a system. The switch to Siemens tools will give us the ability to model and simulate everything and truly allow us to optimize the performance of our new vehicle. As we start on our quest to win the World Solar Challenge in 2015, we’ll be leveraging a full complement of PLM solutions,” said Pavan Naik, Michigan Solar Car project manager.

The winning car, Quantum, marked the 12^th solar vehicle built by the team in 24 years. The latest two models were made using the help of Siemens PLM. This will be a great asset to the team of 100 when they are looking for employment, as about 90% of automotive’s top OEMs and Tier One suppliers use Siemens software products.

“Siemens is committed to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education, and is proud to have supported the University of Michigan team’s race toward victory … Our advanced PLM technology will continue to help elevate the performance of this highly successful team as they prepare for their next challenge,” said Dave Taylor, VP of Global Marketing at Siemens PLM Software.

Don’t let that 4-hour lead trick you into underestimating the challenge of the event. For the final stage of the race, University of Minnesota was only 45 seconds behind the winning team. If previous stages were as tight then this would have been a very different race. It just goes to show what students can do with the “big boy tools.”

Images and Sources American Solar Challenge, Siemens & U of M.