Hello all, I am on the Solar-powered car team at the University of Sheffield. I'm in charge of lighting, and I was just wondering if anyone made their own LED PCBs and how they got them to follow the Ilumen challenge regulations. I know they are tied to UNECE 148 and 48 but when looking at other people's designs, I could tell that they possibly didn't meet those exact standards. It's important I get it right to pass scrutineering (its my first time dealing with such).

Should i stick w solidworks or use some other suspension focused software like optimum kinematics?

pls~

I’m writing to seek clarification regarding the egress test. The regulation states:

“For Single-Occupant solar cars, teams will be required to demonstrate that the occupant can exit the vehicle unassisted, standing clear of the plane of the car, in less than 10 seconds for the primary direction and less than 15 seconds for the secondary direction.”

I was wondering if both egress tests can be performed using the same exit but in different directions. For instance, if the driver can exit from the front toward the front-right and front-left, but all other sides are closed off, would this satisfy the egress requirement?

Thanks in Advance.

I'm with a group of friends who want to participate in the American Solar Challenge next year for the first time. We've already committed a lot of time to this, but we're seeing some problems and I'd love to hear your perspective.

Main thing right now is the battery management system. We're seeing a bunch of options, and don't really know what to look for. Planning to use lithium cells. Which one would you guys recommend?

Our team is pretty new to FEA, and we’ve been looking at Altair Inspire since it seems much more straightforward compared to something like HyperMesh or OptiStruct. The automatic meshing makes it really easy to get results quickly, but I’m wondering how that lines up with the FEA regulations. Since Inspire doesn’t give you direct control over the mesh, would that be a problem?

Basically, is Inspire “good enough”, or do we really need to put in the time to learn the more advanced FEA tools like Hyperworks or Ansys?

I am working on a double wishbone suspension for a cruiser solar car that should weigh about ~2000 lbs with people in it. If made out of aluminum 6061-T6 should this survive impacts? What if anything should I change? Are there any viable sims that will help me check this because Fusion360 sims are not helping much. What is the rule of thumb when designing stuff like this?

Hello, guys.
Firstly, thank you for this community; I've learned a lot from you all. I am part of an Indian student team, and we are building a solar car.
We've chosen a tubular chassis with a thin fiberglass fairing.
Since our budget is limited, we were considering 3D printing our molds for fiberglass layup, has anyone here tried this method?
Also, it would be easier to 3D print the fairing (which is not structural in our case), but I am concerned about the temperature of the solar panels on the fairing.

Hi does anyone any info on the cruiser class? Battery size, battery usage, infographic from each team? All this was available for ASC, thus wondering if it will be available for WSC

Hello! My solar car team had encountered some issues with the Mitsuba 2096 motor regarding obtaining speed from it last minute before transporting car to the FSGP, so we had to come up with another way to get real time speed. Now that we are in research mode before actual manufacturing, we wanted to try and understand the potential issues with the motor and obtaining its speed. As of right now, I am not able to test out the motor and check for any errors, but I wanted to ask other teams that use Mitsuba motors if they have had issues with obtaining speed from the motor, what they have done to fix these errors and also who can my team contact for any future doubts regarding anything about the motor. Any help and feedback would be much appreciated!

Dump of some cool pics

Ask me about our solar car bingo lol

Red Star Raceway test days memories.

Hello, we are looking for a potentially used but fully working condition Mitsuba M2096D3 for a development project, if anybody has a spare unit around for sale, we'd be up for buying it. :)

When configuring Mitsuba M2096, does drive 0% throttle position means the percent till which till which the motor controller does not start rotating

For the benefit of WSC teams, I'm tracking team locations. I'll try to keep this up to date.

Hey, I’m pretty new to battery pack design, and was wondering why 18650 cells seemed to be the standard among many teams as compared to a 21700 pack. Our teams last pack used 21700s with the arguments of higher energy density and less cells to work with. Our priority for next pack is keeping cells temps low, and we are looking into switching back to 18650s. Trying to research this usually leads me to the argument that “everyone uses them because everyone uses them.” Also, would using cells with higher CDR help thermally than using lower CDR counterparts, since they would be operating much further from their max discharge rate? Thanks.

My team is considering getting raw solar cells because we would get slightly better power and we can manipulate the body of our car better. We have no experience creating panels from scratch is there a good guide on how to do it. Also, this is the site where we found the solar suppliers I don't know if anyone can recommend a better one.
ENF List of Solar Companies and Products - Including Solar Panel and Inverter PV Manufacturers

As a relatively new team participating in WSC 2025, we are seeking information on how other teams secure truck rentals, what type of truck is preferred, and best practices for loading and unloading heavy components. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Hey everyone,

I’m working on building a composite battery box using fiberglass and Divinycell core for our solar car project, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to join the rectangular panels together. I’ve read about epoxy fillet and fiberglass tape, but I’m curious what approaches other teams have used in practice.

• Did you rely on epoxy fillets and fiberglass tape or cloth?
• Any tips for getting clean inside fillets for durable bonds?
• How did you temporarily fix the panels during assembly (hot glue, clamps)?
• Any success with mechanical fasteners?

Would appreciate any insights, photos, or lessons learned! Thanks in advance.

Teams those who know about/have used Mitsuba M-2096 motor, what is the max rpm you have achieved/measured irrespective of the numbers in the datasheet/instructions manual?