Belgian Solar Car Team Trains in St. Cloud Ahead of Cross-Country Race

(KNSI) – A world-champion solar car team from Belgium has set up shop at St. Cloud State University as it prepares for the biggest solar race in America.

The Innoptus Solar Team, made up of 11 engineering students from KU Leuven, a university in Belgium, has spent the past four weeks living and working on campus. The team is fine-tuning its car, the Infinite Apollo, before the American Solar Challenge, an eight-day, 1,500-mile race from Minneapolis to Amarillo, Texas, that runs July 25th through August 1st. The route follows the Great River Road along the Mississippi to St. Louis, then picks up historic Route 66.

So why did the team pick St. Cloud? Location, location, location. The race starts at the University of Minnesota, and the qualifying event, the Formula Sun Grand Prix, runs July 21st through July 23rd at Brainerd International Raceway. St. Cloud sits almost perfectly between the two, and SCSU had the space to host the team for the summer.

Belgium’s team is no underdog. It has raced solar cars around the world since 2004 and won two world championships in Australia. Team member Anthony Vanden Abeele told KNSI News its biggest rival, a Dutch team from Delft, is the reigning world champion, and the two squads have even been sharing the SCSU campus. “So we’re here to take our revenge on the Dutch and hopefully take the crown in the American Solar Challenge.”

Team member Bernhard Klykens says Minnesota’s sometimes cloudy weather isn’t a problem. “The energy we get in through our solar panel doesn’t really directly translate itself into sun or no sun, as we get also a lot of energy when there is some clouds, because the light is reflecting on the clouds and getting back into the solar panels.”

The car weighs about 400 pounds, roughly a tenth of a typical electric car, and is so aerodynamic the team says its wind resistance is comparable to a single truck mirror. On a full battery alone, it can travel about 300 miles. Three drivers will rotate behind the wheel during race days, which run from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

The students all finished their master’s degrees back home and are spending a year on the project. Vanden Abeele explained what drives him to be part of the crew. “Being in a team of 11 ambitious engineers who have a once in a lifetime project, doing an international race, exploring new worlds, learning extremely much in a very short span of time is, I think for me personally, one of the main reasons why I got into it.”

Vanden Abeele says St. Cloud has rolled out the welcome mat, right down to the food. “We were just randomly invited by a passerby on the street for having some pork ribs at their house with the whole team last week. So it was a great experience to be invited at someone’s home just for a barbecue grill,” he said. Both men said the food was good.

About 30 alumni will fly in to support the students during the race, traveling in a caravan of 10 vehicles. The public can see the Infinite Apollo and the other competing cars at a display day at the University of Minnesota on July 24th, the day before the race begins. The team plans to head home after the race.

You can follow the racers on Instagram. To find out more about the race, click here.

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