NEWS RELEASE
19 October 2001
Chase
for a clean car powers ahead
Wouldn’t
it be wonderful if the level of your fuel gauge moved up instead of down
as you travelled to work? It may seem too good to be true but for Senior
Research Fellow at UniSA’s Centre
for Industrial and Applicable Mathematics, Peter
Pudney, the drive to work each day is literally an empowering
experience. The level on the gauge is higher half way through the journey
than when he left his Adelaide hills home.
Pudney’s
daily drive is part of an evaluation of an electric powered vehicle loaned
to the University by Gerard Industries. It has a meter just like a fuel
gauge that shows how much charge is left in the battery. When driving
downhill or braking the battery recharges so the meter level rises. To
drive to the city from the hills costs Pudney almost nothing. Of course,
going home is different.
Made
in the United States, this standard four-seater electric car was featured
in the Clipsal 500 car race. It’s very quiet, accelerates like a
standard car and is faster than half the cars on the road, according to
Pudney.
“I
drive in to the Mawson Lakes campus, plug it in, drive it home and plug it
in again. It takes a few hours to charge,” Pudney said.
“I
have now travelled more than 700 km in the car. Energy costs and carbon
dioxide emissions are both half of those of an equivalent petrol car.
“We
are evaluating the car’s effectiveness in collaboration with researchers
from UniSA’s School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering
and Rocco Zito, a research engineer at UniSA’s Transport Systems Centre.
“Our
plan is to drive the car around to get some experience with it, do
extensive data logging and develop mathematical models of the car so that
we can then compare its performance with that of the solar cars we have
been building. Somewhere between the solar car and this electric car is
the ideal commuter vehicle,” Pudney said.
“We
are building another solar car for the Solar Challenge in November. After
that we will try to build a practical commuter car that is much more
efficient than the electric car and a lot more practical than the solar
car, based on our experience with solar and electric cars.
“We
already have some UniSA industrial design students working on developing a
concept for the car,” Pudney said.
He
believes that the annual Sun Race from Adelaide to Sydney would be an
ideal event in which to launch the electric solar car. The car could be
recharged from solar panels on the roof of a house, as well as having sun
on the car.
“Our
aim is to reduce greenhouse gasses caused by the carbon dioxide and other
harmful emissions of petrol fuelled cars. If we can develop a design for a
car that’s efficient enough to run from solar energy, we will have
sustainable transport,” he said.
Media
contact: Geraldine Hinter (08) 8302 0963 or 0417 861832
