current vehicle: eleanor

Testing is currently under way on our newest vehicle, "Eleanor." With the design of Eleanor, we hoped to improve upon the technology used in Tesseract. Eleanor's design is based around the regulations of our upcoming races. Several of the most drastic changes are detailed below:

Seating angle

In previous years, solar car drivers have had to lay down in their vehicles to drive. This allowed teams to minimize the thickness of the cars, which lowered the aerodynamic drag. To bring solar cars closer to commercial passenger cars, a new regulation requires that the driver is seated upright: the seat back must be less than 27 degrees away from vertical. The SEVT has had to rethink the shape of the aerodynamic car body and the layout of items within the car in order to comply with the new rules.

Steering wheel

Eleanor's steering system, like Tesseract's, will use a rack-and-pinion steering mechanism to connect the driver input to the wheels. But while Tesseract's drivers used handlebars to steer, Eleanor will feature a conventional circular steering wheel.

Fixed fairings

For the first time in the history of the SEVT, the car features fixed fairings. Fairings fixed and integrated into the body design permit lower drag, greater reliability, and allow the car to take advantage of crosswinds to help propel the car forward.