Racing with light

• By CHANTE DIONNE WARREN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 26, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Gasoline won’t power a thing on the 700-pound, solar-powered car parked inside the technology building at Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

Two-hundred pounds of solar panels will fuel the car down a 600-mile stretch of highway.

The sun-powered car, which so far resembles a skeletal cross between a dune buggy and a motorcycle, will carry one of its high school-age builders and designers through two states beginning in Round Rock, Texas, and on to Golden, Colo., where the  national Winston Solar Car Race will end.

The Baton Rouge Magnet High team wants to compete in the national cross-country race in July, 2009, said Simon Shirazi, 18, a Baton Rouge Magnet High 2008 graduate who helped spearhead building the car.

Students have performed continuous upgrades that have helped improve the car’s performance. They are also recruiting newer students to help them complete it. During a July test drive, the car reached speeds of 60 miles per hour, about 30 miles above its high speed a month prior, Shirazi said.

“Think you might want to join our team?” Joey LeBlanc, 16, asked an industrial design student last week.

The car has cost $8,000 so far. Some parts have come from junkyards. Other parts were purchased or donated. But it will require another $6,000 to complete the body work, add tail lights and buy more solar panels and upper end batteries, said Peter Oelschlaeger, drafting teacher. Students have joined Oelschlaeger after school, on weekends, over holidays and during the summer to work on the car.

They are raising money to help pay for the car, and travel expenses associated with the trip, Oelschlaeger said.

The race is held annually in various locations and occurs in a series of heats. Team drivers are limited to three hours per day behind the wheel, with cars limited to six hours of total race time daily.

In addition, other team members will ride in a “chase vehicle,” from which they will give the solar car driver race instructions via walkie talkies and from their laptops.

The solar car will require 200 pounds of solar panels, which are responsible for grabbing the sunlight’s energy. The car can contain eight batteries used to store energy from the solar array to make them available for the motor’s use.

“If the sun is really cooking, we have enough juice to run off the panels,” Oelschlaeger.

The car was conceived at a coffee shop where Shirazi and his buddies knocked around the idea of entering the race and then used their drafting skills to create conceptual designs of the car on coffee napkins, Shirazi said.