Europe's longest Solar Rally headed for a 250-mile, sun-powered week
Europe's largest Solar Rally departed from Barcelona, Spain, yesterday and is expected to arrive in Toulouse, France, on June 7th. That's about 250 miles over the course of a week. This is the seventh edition of the Rally, organized by non-profit organizations Volt-Tour and Phebus Ariège. Any vehicles can participate, as long as they satisfy a single condition: all of their energy must be obtained from sunlight, either with on-board or auxiliary photovoltaic panels.The Rally defines itself as a forum for solar car developers to communicate instead of simply a race. And don't miss the scoring system: Cars don't get points depending on their speed and how much time it takes for them to make a certain lap, but on how little energy they need.
The Rally also takes in consideration additional measures to produce as little carbon as possible. First of all, the Rally produces all of the hot water it needs using solar energy, and the safety car is a Toyota Prius. Any energy that they need to produce that doesn't come from solar radiation gets offset via the purchase of carbon rights.
[Source: Rallyesolaire (h/t to Imma)]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Karl-Uwe Strunzen 5:02AM (6/03/2008)
Cool!
Nice story, I didn't even know this existed....
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SirMikan 10:16AM (6/03/2008)
On a related note, the North American Solar Challenge is coming up this July, and I hope AutoBlogGreen will keep some tabs on the race. Many of the teams also keep their own blogs, as well.
http://www.americansolarchallenge.org/
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Steve 10:37AM (6/03/2008)
Did they offset the carbon emissions from building and shipping the solar panels?
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