ROSE is partially powered by battery, and she has 900 individual batteries called Lithium Ion-18650’s. Blakeley describes them as “basically oversized AA batteries” and that they’re “some of the most energy dense batteries that you can get on the market.” ROSE gets her back up energy from her batteries, and on a full charge, she can run for 300 miles.
the United States, and according to Kali Smith, the current business director of Team Sunergy, “It’s actually the team that’s been around the longest in America...I think their team is 31 years old this year, very old.” Team PrISUm approached our team and offered them the body and roll cage of one of their cars as a donation. Blakeley describes the conversation, “We were approached by Iowa State University’s solar car team and they just said, ‘We know you’re a new team trying to start up. We have the body of our old car, and we’re wondering if you’re interested.’ And we obviously said absolutely, because that gave us a platform to build off of.” For Team PrISUm, the most elite of the solar vehicle teams, to see our team struggling to get started, and turn around and help them like that, that was something that Team Sunergy never forgot. Team PrISUm’s original name for the solar car that they donated was Hyperion, and Team Sunergy renamed it Apperion, as sort of a tribute to them. Austin Shaw, the current electrical director of Team Sunergy, describes it as, “we wanted to keep something similar that would kind of pay homage to them, but that would kind of put our own unique touch on it. So Apperion was what we ended up with.”
Apperion
ROSE’s motors are 2x Mitsuba 3-phase PMAC brushless, high-efficiency electric motors with a combined 13.4 horsepower and 50 ft-lbs of torque. According to Wyatt Bailey, “The motors are housed in the rear suspension of the car, connected directly to the rear wheels. This helps reduce energy loss by applying torque directly to the wheels.” 48
High Country Magazine
July 2018
Team Sunergy went on to make everyone proud, achieving quite a few impressive goals with Apperion. At their first race, the 2016 Formula Sun Grand Prix, they won 3rd place, a momentous achievement. Blakeley says that first year that they raced had to be his favorite moment in all five years of being with this program and that, “We had no idea what we were doing and we were racing against 27 other colleges and universities from around the world. We were not an engineering school, and we had never raced at a solar car race before, when other teams had 25 plus years of experience, and yet we still placed 3rd. So for us to go into that completely oblivious and have no idea what the race would be like and then place that well, that was a monumental achievement. I think that really drove the project to a completely different level than it is today. If we didn’t do well in that first race, I don’t think we would have
as much support and drive and interest in our project as we do today.” They went on to the 2016 American Solar Challenge, which Kali Smith describes in conjunction with the Formula Sun Grand Prix as, “kind of like a two part race. Every summer there’s a Formula Sun Grand Prix, but every other year on even years there’s an American Solar Challenge. So this was one of those years where the Formula Sun Grand Prix serves as a qualifier for the American Solar Challenge.” Team Sunergy, having won 3rd place with Apperion, certainly qualified for the American Solar Challenge, and they absolutely smashed the race, coming in an impressive 6th place. Then at the 2017 Formula Sun Grand Prix, they received 2nd place, beating their score from 2016.
A Car All Their Own However, Team Sunergy really wanted to try their hand at building a solar vehicle completely from scratch, one that would be all their own. Wyatt Bailey, the current engineering director, explained that, “Some people in the solar racing world might think that we got a body and roll cage from a very experienced team, Iowa State. They’re very tenure, they’ve been to a lot of races, and they’re very successful. So this is kind of the first time we’ve been able to branch out and say, ‘This is what we can do’, from scratch.” They began designing a new solar car, which of course needed a snazzy new name. Austin Shaw describes their process of deciding, “On our social media, we had people suggesting names and tons of team members suggesting names. Then we just kind of slowly narrowed it down to about 10-15 that we thought were good, viable options that were unique, hadn’t been used before, and that really spoke to how we felt, whether it was some connection to the Appalachian mountains or some connection to our mission. And then we just had a big team vote on it.” And from this whirl of suggestions came ROSE: Racing on Solar Energy.
ROSE’s Mission So far, Team Sunergy had been competing in the Challenger Class at their races. Bailey explains that, “Challenger classes are built to just