Author name: Derek Chou

Even as CalSol is working hard for the upcoming American Solar Challenge, we continue to get sponsors for our projects. Bay Area Circuits graciously donated to us the service of fabricating our in-house designed circuit boards, which will make up our dashboard, pedals, motor interface, lights, and battery monitoring systems. Thank you for the boards, Bay […]

We have finally completed Zephyr’s chassis, after a number of long months of design, testing, delays, and welding! Thank you to all of the different companies and people who have helped us throughout the design, verification, and fabrication process: Garner Heat Treat – Test heat treatment for weld samples & actual chassis heat treatment Dennis

Terminal Manufacturing graciously took some time out of its schedule to teach 11 CalSol members how to do Tungsten-Inert-Gas (TIG) welding on aluminum. A big thanks to Jimmy for being a terrific teacher and allowing each and every one of us to actually get our hands on the machine and weld. His concern over safety really hit

Recently, the suspension/chassis team has been working hard on finalizing the designs for the structural components of Zephyr. Because of the hard work of our team members, we have been able to shave over 55 lbs overall from the suspension and chassis! Most of these weight savings have come from changes in material and optimization

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

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 arrived bright and early at 7AM this morning so that we could undergo our scheduled tests: the electrical system, battery protection system, and driver body/sizing. With the memories of the testing we’d done before this first day of inspection, there was a mixed air of both excitement and anxiety, as we would finally