The World Solar Challenge (WSC), since 2013 named Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, is an international event for solar powered cars driving 3000 kilometres through the Australian outback.
With the exception of a four-year gap between the 2019 and 2023 events, owing to the cancellation of the 2021 event, the World Solar Challenge is typically held every two years. The course is over through the Australian Outback, from Darwin, Northern Territory, to Adelaide, South Australia. The event was created to foster the development of solar-powered vehicles.
The WSC attracts teams from around the world, most of which are fielded by universities or corporations, although some are fielded by high schools. It has a 32-year history spanning fifteen events, with the inaugural event taking place in 1987. Initially held once every three years, the event became biennial from the turn of the century.
Since 2001 the WSC was won seven times out of ten efforts by the Nuna team and cars of the Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands. The Tokai Challenger, built by the Tokai University of Japan, was able to win 2009 and 2011. In the most recent edition (2019), the Belgian Agoria Solar Team from KU Leuven University won.
Starting in 2007, the WSC has multiple classes. After the German team of Bochum University of Applied Sciences competed with a four-wheeled, multi-seat car, the BoCruiser (in 2009), in 2013 a radically new "Cruiser Class" was introduced, stimulating the technological development of practically usable, and ideally road-legal, multi-seater solar vehicles. Since its inception, Solar Team Eindhoven's four- and five-seat Stella solar cars from Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) won the Cruiser Class in all four events so far.
Remarkable technological progress has been achieved since the General Motors led, highly experimental, single-seat Sunraycer prototype first won the WSC with an average speed of . Once competing cars became steadily more capable to match or exceed legal maximum speeds on the Australian highway, the challenge rules were consistently made more demanding and challenging — for instance after Honda's Dream car first won with an average speed exceeding in 1996. In 2005 the Dutch Nuna team were the first to beat an average speed of .
The 2017 Cruiser class winner, the five-seat Stella Vie vehicle, was able to carry an average of 3.4 occupants at an average speed of . Like its two predecessors, the vehicle was successfully road registered by the Dutch team, further emphasizing the great progress in real-world compliance and practicality that has been achieved.
The WSC held its 30th anniversary event on 8–15 October 2017.
Objective
The objective of the challenge is to promote the innovation of solar-powered cars. It is a design competition at its core, and every team/car that successfully crosses the finish line is considered successful. Teams from universities and enterprises participate. In 2015, 43 teams from 23 countries competed in the challenge.
Challenge strategy
Efficient balancing of power resources and power consumption is the key to success during the challenge. At any moment in time, the optimal driving speed depends on the weather forecast and the remaining capacity of the batteries. The team members in the escort cars will continuously remotely retrieve data from the solar car about its condition and use these data as input for prior developed computer programs to work out the best driving strategy.
It is equally important to charge the batteries as much as possible in periods of daylight when the car is not driving. To capture as much solar energy as possible, the solar panels are generally directed such that these are perpendicular to the incident sun rays. Sometimes the whole solar array is tilted for this purpose.