ANU Solar Racing
A student team that builds and races solar cars in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge
Our 2025 car racing down the Stuart Highway
What is the World Solar Challenge?
The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge is a biennial event that sees solar-powered cars race 3022km through the harsh Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide.
The cars we build are highly efficient, highly aerodynamically optimised, electric vehicles that run on sunlight. This competition brings together the most passionate, brightest, and and innovative young minds from all over the world. At the peak, the winning margin can be as close as a few minutes over a 5-day long race!
ANU Solar Racing competes in the Challenger class of the competition, the original single-seater race where external charging is not allowed. We are allowed a full battery (of very limited capacity) at the start of the race in Darwin, but then need to rely on sunlight to make it the rest of the way to Adelaide.
Teams are allowed to drive from 8am to 5pm daily, stopping for 30 minutes at 9 mandatory control stops along the way to regroup and change drivers. Cars are escorted by a front and rear escort vehicle while on the road, while a following convoy provides critical technical and strategic support.
To go as far and as fast as possible, teams optimise everything, from aerodynamics to weight to electrical efficiency to convoy logistics. Many of these cars have similar aerodynamic drag to a single side mirror on a regular car, while weighing less than 200kg. All this rolls over into real-world EV and solar technologies, with many spin-off startups and technologies having gained commercial success as a result of innovations developed in this competition.
Drone shot of our car driving through the outback
ANU Solar Racing
ANU Solar Racing is a solar car team from the Australian National University. We have designed and raced 4 solar cars in the 10 years we've been a team, building many of our mechnical, electrical and aerodynamic systems in-house. For the first time in our latest car, we have also brought composites analaysis and manufacturing in-house. We are a small team of around 30 that does all this while studying full-time at university, driven by pure passion and determination.
ANU Solar Racing team at the 2025 finish line
My role on the team
I have been on the team for 3 years now, seeing partial development of our third solar car into the 2023 race, as well as start-to-end development of our latest solar car for the 2025 race
I was involved in the Aerodynamics and Mechanical subteams in 2023, designing a battery cooling system for that car. I now am in the Structures team, who oversaw the aerodynamic and structural development of the 2025 car, as well as bringing the chassis into life through manufacturing.
I worked on various systems on the 2025 solar car in design, analysis, and manufacturing; being a small team, we all help out where needed. I was also a solar car driver for the 2025 race!
Me behind the wheel of the Solar Car - the 2025 race was moved forward into winter, which saw some more extreme weather events
A couple major project of mine included designing the Carbon Fibre Internal Structures of our vehicle and conducting manufacturing and fitment of the Wheel Jackets.
Below is a collection of some of my other work and notes for the 2025 car:
One of my early CAD prototypes of the aerobody and its curvature analysis - G3 continuity across much of the body. I also did a bit of initial aerodynamic developemnt in Ansys Fluent
Solar car steering wheel structure and analysis. Stress concentation and open edge issues on the laminate were solved with decore and epoxy sealing on the open edge. This designed used an aluminium plate for component mounting and provided ductile fail-safe material. A carbon sandwich panel bonded on top provided stiffness and out-of-plane load bearing capacity.
Me trimming the edge of our topshell (solar deck) during layup and the first layer debulk in our in-house composites workshop
I welded together our suspension control arms and shock mounts
Milled some drilling guides for our suspension mounts
Designed and made a carbon fibre brake pedal mount that trimmed 300g from the original aluminimum mount while operating with the same loads. Unfortunately this didn't make its way onto the car due to time limitations.