Until now Sleipner have fulfilled two races in Shell Eco-Marathon 2013. The weather was very rainy both Wednesday and Thursday. Yesterday Sleipner did 113.96 km/kWh (48 nl hydrogen gas) and today Sleipner did 130.54 km/kWh (42 nl hydrogen gas) in the 16,3 km lap.
Tomorrow is the last day of the competition and Sleipner will do one or two races if the weather forecast is correct – if rain no racing.
Waiting for race
Sleipner on the track!
Team Sleipner
This morning, Elba achieved its first valid result on the track. The preliminary performance figure was 147 km/kWh, and this has never been achieved before by any Swedish team in the Urban Concept category.
After the validation, the car was taken back to the team paddock to be prepared for further attempts.
The Sleipner team also managed to produce valid results on the racing track. So far, its best performance has been 113 km/kWh.
Yesterday, Elba passed Shell’s technical and safety inspections without any problems. The staff was very impressed with the car’s technical details. Apparently, with its weight of only 90 kilograms it was one of the lightest cars that they had encountered in the Urban Concept category.
After the inspection, the crew was allowed to take the car out to the practice track. It was reportedly very easy to maneuver, and other systems such as regenerative braking functioned as expected.
Now the only thing that’s left is to prepare for the race. Shell provided the teams with an animated 3D rendering of the track, and our drivers studied it carefully in order to plan their driving effectively.
Today we thought it would be a good idea to find out how much the Elba car actually weighs. We started by filling the driver’s compartment with all components that haven’t been attached yet.
After lots of work, we got it suspended in the air without breaking anything. The dial pointed at 90 kg, which was a little more than expected. However, it is still good for a car of this size.
The public was invited to the lab during the Transport Demo Day.
Among the earliest guests was a TV team from SVT (Sweden’s state television).
There were a lot of people attending the event, curious to find out more about the Eco Cars and the other projects at KTH Transport Labs.
(On a related note, the outdated parts of this Eco Cars webpage have been fixed, and the general information should now be up to date)
Some updates from the ELBA team:
The main part of the outer shell was finally attached to the chassis yesterday.
Later in the evening, ELBA was transported together with Sleipner to Arlanda Test Track for some powered tests. It performed very well, although there are still lots of things that need to be done before the trip to Rotterdam.
We ended up improving the old body instead of making a completely new one. It does still mean a whole lot of work.
Due to the size of the mill there was 23 parts for making the mold.
Some creative ways of applying pressure when gluing the parts together.
15 parts glued together and the mold is starting to take shape.
Big guy, big mold.
When thats done there is still several hours of filler and sanding before it is done for casting the part. But we are getting there.
Last week Peter Georén was interview by one of the guys from Sleipner team working on the fuel cell. Unfortunately it’s in Swedish. We hope you at least enjoy the great moving photos of our projects.
This Friday Sleipner had its first test drive. It was a success except for the rainy weather and our inability to do the test drive outside on the parking lot. This week we will do more tests as the Sleipner project is coming closer to its deadline.
Final inspection before test drive
The driver doing his first meters in Sleipner!
Things are progressing fast now. We are exporting the equipment from
the test rig into the car.
Too bad its raining outside, at least we can do a burnout on the lab floor.
