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A solar car designed by British students is being prepared for an 1,800-mile sprint across the Australian Outback this autumn.

Codenamed Bethany, the car is expected to reach speeds of 60mph, while using the same amount of energy as a hairdryer, all of which will be harnessed from the sun. To achieve this feat, it will weigh just 160kg and feature six square metres of high-efficiency silicon solar cells.

The car is the work of 75 students who founded Cambridge University Eco Racing with the aim of competing in the World Solar Challenge, a race between Darwin and Adelaide for solar-powered cars, in October.

The students have been working on the design for 18 months and are currently building the car with the help of a few British companies. Huntsman Advanced Materials is supplying the carbon-fibre composite from which the car’s body will be moulded, while Cambridge Precision is machining hundreds of components.

Bethany is powered by an electric hub motor that converts 98 per cent of the power it consumes into movement. This, coupled with regenerative braking, which converts energy from the braking process back into usable power, and the car’s slick aerodynamics, ultra-light weight and minimal rolling resistance, means the car uses as little as one fiftieth of the power of a standard petrol car.

Anthony Law, who is the team manager and also a final year Aerospace Engineering student, is working on a cruise control software package designed to ensure that power is used most efficiently. A support crew will take into account data including the road conditions and weather forecasts before determining how fast the car should be travelling and setting the speed remotely, leaving the driver to do no more than steer the car.

Bethany will be unveiled officially in July, but Charlie Watt, the technical director, says the car will be finished a month earlier. The team has already built one car, the Affinity, which was the first road-legal solar-powered car to be driven on British roads. It successfully completed a journey from Lands End to John o’Groats last year.

The students are now concentrating on raising the £200,000 it will need to get Bethany to Australia, and Law admits that they have some way to go. They are hoping to attract sponsors in return for advertising space on the car.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are working on their own entry to the race.

Reuters reports that Eleanor is "one of the most advanced solar cars yet designed", capable of reaching 80mph and driving up to 200 miles in the dark. That's because it can store power in a block of 600 laptop battery cells.

That's not without its costs. However unchivalrous it may be to mention it, Eleanor is a considerably more substantial lady: she weighs in at 226kg, 66kg heavier than Bethany.


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