July 2012

The results are in, and CalSol has officially placed 4th in this year’s American Solar Challenge! Although we had already largely predicted this outcome based on the events of Stage 5, having our accomplishment set in stone means a lot to us. This is a huge step forward for CalSol, as we have proven that […]

On Monday July 23 we visited 3M’s facility to speak with them about all of their new technologies that could help us build our next solar car. We found many intriguing new tapes, velcro’s, adhesives, and coverings that we will definitely be integrating into our future projects. Thanks again 3M for inviting us to drop

Stage 5 of ASC: 150 miles from La Crosse, WI to St. Paul, MN. It seemed simple at first. Since we’d been driving 200+ mile stretches of road for most days before this, this seemed like it would be a relatively simple day. Except when it started raining. Our strategy from the days before thankfully

Following our third place finish in Normal, IL, another stage loomed in front of us: Normal, IL, to Verona, WI, to La Crosse, WI. Our strategy from the days before seemed to be working quite well, so we decided to apply that same strategy to this stretch: drive sustainably, such that our batteries neither gain

The last two days of raycing, July 17th and 18th has been the third stage of the American Solar Challenge. This stage began in Ann Arbor Michigan and ended in Normal, IL. It has been quite the exciting trip, and as its the best place to begin, from the beginning. The day began beautifully. Ann

Sorry for the late blog post but racing has kept every one of us busier than we could ever imagine. We did want to keep everyone up to date on what has been happening though! We began the day in Mansfield, Ohio in a parking lot at Ohio State University with Oregon State with us.

Yesterday, we drove 161 miles from Rochester, New York, to Erie, Pennsylvania, cautiously setting our speeds since the forecast wasn’t very pretty — most of our sources said that there would be rain and thunderstorms. But as the day wore on, it became evident that there would be no storm at least for the time

We have completed a total of 106 laps today, earning us a spot in the American Solar Challenge 2012! Keep following us on here and on Twitter for status updates on the American Solar Challenge.

The picture says it all. Passing scrutineering yesterday and fixing the little glitches in our array left Impulse in 100% working order and ready to fly onto the track this morning. Today has been a wonderful day with beautiful weather and everyone’s spirits are high with Impulse out on the track.

The Formula Sun Grand Prix (FSGP) has begun! Day one of racing is finished and you can see all of the teams’ progress here: http://americansolarchallenge.org/ at the bottom of the page We have been working around the clock to solve issue after issue with both the regulations and performance of Impulse. Our biggest problems were the dynamic