Aston Martin race cars to use solar power
Solar powered cars tend to be more in the experimental area of the vehicle industry but it would appear that Aston Martin Racing is partnering up with Chinese clean energy company Hanergy to install solar panels on the track vehicles.
Now this seems to be a bit of a weird approach for racing where every extra gram of weight matters but the roof-installed solar panels that they are planning won’t be used to recharge the battery of a hybrid battery, instead the power will be used to cool the car’s cabin – just like it is with the Toyota Prius.
As far as the Prius solar panels use is concerned, they help to run fans which expel hot air from the car when it’s parked. On the racing Aston Martins, the solar cells will drive the air-conditioning system. According to FIA regulations, the cabin of cars entering the World Endurance Challenge must be kept under 32 degrees Celsius.
Usually the air-conditioning systems are powered by the car’s internal combustion engine and this approach not only saps a bit of the available power while at the same time increases fuel consumption. These reasons being rather relevant to a racing endeavor.
The partnership was announced at the Le Mans 24 Hour race – which happened over the weekend – but the technology itself wasn’t quite ready to be showed off. The two companies are hoping to have the new solar-cooled vehicles ready for the next major event. This event will be taking place in the middle of September and will be a six hour-long event at the Circuit of the America in the very hot and sunny Austin, Texas, what better place to test a cooling system than the desert.
If the trials prove a success then the partnership will see systems installed into the V12 Vantage GT3 and V8 Vantage GT4 race cars.
