The Belgian Umicore team presents Sunday, its new solar car. The Umicar Imagine driving with three square metres germaniumcellen. The new car should at the World Solar Challenge better than the predecessor, which crashed.
The Umicar Imagine makes use of a new concentratorsysteem to have more energy to catch. By means of parabolic mirrors more sunlight on the solar cells fall. According to the student team are parabolic mirrors are rarely used on moving vehicles.
The Belgian team is doing with the car in October at the World Solar Challenge. In the race between the solar cars must have a distance to be traveled 3000 km through the desert of Australia. The regulations for the upcoming race are adjusted. Where previous times six square meters germaniumcellen should be used, but now it is just three square metres. A car with traditional solar cells can still always an area of six square meters of covering with cells.
During the World Solar Challenge, the Umicar Imagine the record against the Dutch car 21Connect Solar Team Twente and Nuna6 of the Nuon Solar Team. The Nuna cars dragged in four of the five previous editions, the first in the wait.
