Hello! As CalSol’s new Team Lead I am very excited about the next generation of the UC Berkeley Solar Car Team. Building on our experience at Formula Sun Grand Prix we have critiqued every aspect of our car and are geared up to design something even better. With almost twenty returning members we have much more experience than last year’s team.
We are also very excited about the enthusiasm of the new members. Between our newly established Business Team and strong interest in both our Mechanical and Electrical sections, CalSol membership has more than doubled. During last months introductions we taught new members SolidWorks, electrical circuits, programming, and general solar car design. The training sessions and labs were designed to make sure that every member is up to speed before we begin complex design and detailed problem solving. They picked up these skills quickly and we are now moving fully into the design of CalSol’s new solar car.
The team will have a preliminary design of the car complete by winter break and the design will be finalized by April of 2010.
I’d like to thank Lockheed Martin for their continued contributions to CalSol. This year is a critical time for sponsorship because we need to replace old components (like the motor and solar cells) that have been reused for far too many years. Thank you very much to Dr. Jim Ryder and Dr. Ab Hashemi for our enjoyable meeting about the future of CalSol.