Solar Team Twente in 2023 – RED X

Building the most efficient solar vehicle of the world. That is what drives the students of Solar Team Twente. The Dutch student team based in Enschede consists of 19 students from the University of Twente and the Saxion University of Applied Sciences. After starting from scratch in September 2022, the team worked through the concept and design phase for their tenth and newest solar car: RED X. To stay at the cutting edge of technology, a new car is built every two years for every edition of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. The whole car is built by the team itself out of carbon fiber. After working tirelessly through the production period, the car was transported to Australia, where the team prepared for reaching their big goal: winning the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge.

3.000 km straight through the harsh Australian outback. The journey from Darwin to Adelaide is nothing like the familiar Dutch roads. The 2023 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge started on the 22^nd of October 2023, where Solar Team Twente managed to climb to 3^rd place within the first racing day after an unlucky start. After overtaking fellow Dutch contenders Brunel Solar Team they started hunting down the race leaders: Innoptus Solar Team from their neighboring country Belgium. After a close battle the team from Twente managed to secure the 2^nd position, finishing only 20 minutes behind the Belgians. Finishing as runner-up in the world championships for solar racing is a proud achievement and marks the end of an adventurous year full of reached milestones and tackled challenges along the way.

Partnering Eurocircuits

With every electrical subsystem developed in-house, RED X features a lot of purpose-built PCBA’s that have their own crucial role in the reliable performance of the solar car. One example of a crucial yet small and hidden PCB is the 12V converter. This converts the voltage of the battery to 12 Volts, powering systems such as the telemetry hub, the lighting and the steering wheel. This versatile PCB can be equipped with different types of DC-DC converters, depending on the power and voltage input requirements. Failure of this small part could lead to the whole car shutting down, highlighting the need for an extremely reliable and robust design and production.

Solar Team Twente wants to thank Eurocircuits for providing us with such high-quality and reliable products to push for a reliable yet high-performance solar car. Having such a reliable partner for so many years is of tremendous help for our efforts to strive for the best possible performance.