Since its founding, the SolarMobil Manipal team has built four cars. These include "Freyr-1" (a single seater solar race car), "SERVe" (Solar Electric Road Vehicle, which was India's first institutional solar electric vehicle prototype) and "SM-S1" (India's first four-seater solar passenger vehicle). The fourth car, "SM-S2", is a cruiser class solar race car aimed at participating in the World Solar Challenge which was launched in November 2018.[citation needed]
Team
The team primarily consists of undergraduate students from various disciplines of engineering at Manipal Institute of Technology, and they receive support from the faculty of Manipal Institute of Technology.[citation needed] The project team has also been supported by companies including Tata Power Solar, Element14, LPS Bossard, Delfingen, Elithion and other technology partners.[citation needed]
The team has competed and in several contests and has earned recognition on a national level.[clarification needed]
Projects
The team has developed four projects: Freyr-1, SERVe, SM-S1 and SM-S2. They are currently[when?] improving on their fourth project aimed at competing in the World Solar Challenge in Australia.[citation needed]
Freyr-1
Freyr-1
Freyr-1 was SolarMobil's first car. The car marked the inception of the student collective project, SolarMobil, in 2011. The designing, manufacturing and assembly of the car was carried out in-house by the SolarMobil team. Freyr-1 is a single seater, three wheeler solar racing car.
The car featured a lightweight space-frame chassis, a custom-made suspension system and had the ability to drive directly on solar power using a high-power-efficiency drive train. It was designed by be fuel-free and produce zero emissions and zero noise pollution.
The car was built with AISI 4130 Chromoly steel chassis to give it a high strength-to-weight ratio and fibre reinforced plastic body making it lightweight. The solar panels with a 6m2 area constitute the top of the car. The car adheres to World Solar Challenge specifications and belongs to the 'Adventure Class' category of solar vehicles.[citation needed]
SERVe
Conceptual design of SERVe
SERVe (Solar Electric Road Vehicle) was designed in 2015, making it India's first passenger solar electric vehicle prototype.[citation needed] It is a two-seat, four-wheel solar electric passenger car. The top is covered by a curved solar panel which powers the battery pack; which in turn runs the motor. The solar car is capable of a top speed of 65km/h and has a range of about 250km. The key features of the car is that SERVe is, like Freyr-1, fuel-free with zero emissions and zero noise pollution. It is built with AISI 4130 Chromoly steel chassis which gives it high strength to weight ratio and GFRP body making it lightweight. It has an aerodynamic and aesthetic design obtained from the cut section of a tear drop - the most aerodynamic shape. Solar panels are used with a 6m2 area for increased energy generation at 20% efficiency.
With SERVe, SolarMobil entered various competitions, and was the winner of QuEST Global's annual pan-India innovation contest – QuEST Ingenium 2015. Among the shortlisted 10 teams, SolarMobil from Manipal Institute of Technology was adjudged as the winning team. Besides a cash prize, SolarMobil team members were sponsored by Airbus to fly to Europe on a facility tour of its Stade & Bremen facility in Germany. SERVe also secured a third place prize at CII India Innovation Challenge amongst 1500 entries in 2014.[citation needed]
SM-S1
SolarMobil Series -1, dubbed SM-S1, is the third car developed by the team. SM-S1 is India's first solar passenger vehicle.[contradictory] It seats four in a 2x2 arrangement and has a single charge range of 160km. The car uses a hybrid chassis consisting of a ladder and spaceframe chassis. The material used for the chassis is AISI 1018 steel. The body is made of glass fibre reinforced composite and the aerodynamic coefficient of the car is around 0.3. The size of the solar array is 4.5m2. The solar panels were provided to the team by Tata Solar. It houses a 19 kwh battery pack that was manufactured in-house using Li-ion cells.[citation needed]
The car houses a completely custom single speed gearbox that is linked to two AC motors via drive shafts. The car is a front wheel drive. The suspension systems, and hand brake systems were developed in-house and manufactured by the students themselves. The main braking system is hydraulic and uses Wilwood four piston callipers to provide efficient braking.[citation needed]
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