July 2nd, 2015. This is the day we all looked forward to for an entire year. Both with desire but also anxiety: the car presentation. We could finally show where we had working on all those months and what our image of ‘the car of the future’ is.
I think that the weeks prior to the car presentation were the most heaviest of the entire year. We wanted to make sure that we would present a driving car and because of that, the pressure increased a notch. On the Timelaps frames of our GoPro, which was turned on day and night, this is captured perfectly: through the windows in the workplace you see the days turning into nights, but the light in the workplace never shuts down. We were working around the clock. It was all worth it, because what a great day it was! With 36 Celsius degrees, we presented for a enormous crowd Stella Lux, the energy-positive family car. Stella Lux was received with open arms and we look back on this day with enormous pride and satisfaction. Click here to get an impression of this day.
TRAILING ARM PART I
Hi! I am Karlijn, parttime member of STE and I have been working on a composite trailing arm. We can reduce the weight of a trailing arm with 33% by making it out of composite instead of aluminium. Read more about it in next month’s newsletter!
FIRST KILOMETERS
To ensure that all designed and produced parts are working well, we test her to the fullest. This takes place at exciting locations like the military base in Oirschot and some other secret locations.
TAKE STELLA FOR A SPIN
PATRICK DEENEN
Now we have had the car presentation we go to the next stage: testing. After the design and production phase this will be the moment of truth. Will Stella Lux comply with every demand we have and how will she perform in real-life situations? These are questions we try to answer during the testing period which takes place on a safe location. We start with safety tests from different scenario’s. For example: are the passengers able to get out of the car fast in a dangerous situation? Are the brakes strong enough to withstand an emergency stop? If the car is qualified ‘safe’ while drigving at low speed we increase the speed of the car and eventually start looking for the boundaries of Lux. Furthermore we test all functionalities like cruise control, direction lights and braking lights.
We encounter many issues while we test all imaginable situations. We want to perform a lot of tests but at the same time we want to solve these issues. That is why we change between two shifts: a testing shift and an issue-solving-shift. The test shift starts in the morning and comes back in the midday where the issue-solving-shift takes over to solve the issues that were encountered that day. This way we can use our time efficiently and let Stella Lux perform as good as possible in Australia!
OPTIMAL ELECTRONICS
MARALD OTTEN
WINDTUNNEL
To test our aerodynamics we took Stella to a windtunnel. By sticking little pieces of thread on every side of Stella we could exactly see how the air around her behaved.
EINDHOVEN SUPPORTS
Rob van Gijzel, Mayor of Eindhoven told us that he and the city is proud of our accomplishments. Therefore Eindhoven starts a crowdfunding campaign to gather the final bits of financial support. Get your STE sunglasses, T-shirt or a Solar Charger on www.eindhovensteuntstella.nl
BOOTCAMP
All the thinking gives our brain a good condition, but what about our body? We make sure we eat enough fruit and healthy food. Besides that we sport to arrive in good condition in Australia and the World Solar Challenge!
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