Held every three years and run over a 1,870 mile (3,009km) course from Darwin to Adelaide, the World Solar Challenge has earned a reputation as the world’s biggest race for solar-powered transport. The 1996 event attracted no fewer than 57 cars and bicycles with the British hoping to improve on their dismal showing of previous years. Only one British competitor, Philip Farrand, an engineer with the Williams Grand Prix team, had ever even managed to complete the distance, coming second in the conventional lead-acid class in 1993. In that same year the only other British entrant, laboratory engineer Brian Hamilton, failed to make it off the start line.
But the British faced tough opposition from the Honda ‘Dream’ car which, with its covering of mono-crystal silicon cells, was capable of speeds in excess of 90mph (144.8km/h) and could cruise at 56mph (90.1km/h). The energy from the solar panels was stored in a silver-oxide zinc battery powering a DC brushless motor. In the world of solar transport, it was a formidable machine.
The starters – scaled down from an original list of some 300 – set off from Darwin on 27 October for their long trek across the outback via Alice Springs to the south. The race was spread over four days, but there was rarely any doubt as to which car would be first to reach Adelaide. The Honda Dream car won in 33hr 32min at an average of 55¾mph (89.8km/h), clipping over two hours off the previous record. A team of Swiss students were runners-up with their Schooler Spirit ’96 car in a time of 35hr and Japan’s Aisol III finished third in 37hr 18min. For the British, world solar supremacy remained a distant vision.