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The 30^th anniversary “World Solar Challenge” has started and it has been considered a special moment in the clean energy history. There were 42 solar-powered cars participated and left on 8^th October from Darwin, Australia. They will travel about 1,880 miles to reach Adelaide. The official time of the race is one week, but it might end before its scheduled time. Point to be noted that the world record holders from Tokai University finished the race within just 30 hours in the year 2009. The technical interruption knocked out various competitors after the 1^st day of racing. The first ones across the line were possibly from the Challenger class, which specially focused on speed. The Cruiser-class cars (two or more seats) were focused on practical designs and more efficiency prior to reach the finish as compared to others.

The arrival near the end is expected to be the non-competitive Adventurer class. There are actually few confirmed front-runners, including Dutch teams, Tokai, and University of Michigan. The regulations of the race have shown a clear sign of how speedily changing solar technology. Teams are using a smaller solar collector than before. Participating cars in the Challenger class haven’t more than 43 square feet solar cells as compared to 65 square feet used in the previous race in the year 2015. It was half the area allowed on cars from original race of 1987. The technology of solar cells and the underlying vehicle designs are now more advanced, so you don’t need huge panels in keeping a car running.