Is Mate Rimac getting some competition?
“As soon as I started exploring the solar vehicle design, I realized that they mostly look like a bed on wheels, and I did not like that”, says Anita, a high school student from Nova Gradiška, who is getting ready to take part in a solar car race in Sisak. “So, I thought it would be nice if the vehicle I designed had a kind of a spaceship look and if it were entirely different from everything we have seen before”, reports Večernji list on March 3, 2016.
The 16-year-old launched her solar car project as a part of extracurricular activities, and she found out about the Solar Race on Google. After a thorough research, her team signed up for the June race. All they needed was a car. “One evening I saw a TV trailer for the Batman movie and it inspired me. Also, in the latest Star Wars movie, several aircraft and vehicle designs caught my eye and I took a bit from each of them”, Anita said.
She adhered to technical specifications that had to be fulfilled for the participation in the race. The vehicle has to have three or four wheels, maximum engine power of 1500 watts, a battery of at least 80 kg and a minimum solar-cell surface of 3 square metres.
She will drive the car herself during the race, but to build the vehicle her team will need 200,000 kunas. The school is asking everyone interested in the project to help fund it or to provide any other assistance that would help implement this idea. Supervising the process are Anita’s professors and a team of 15 students. “We are also working to make the car frame out of carbon. We expect to get the financial assistance from sponsors to be able to buy the materials and to have the expensive processing done”, Anita explained.
She pointed out that every company they have contacted so far had a positive reaction to their inquiry. They were all impressed with the project and showed interest in participating in it.
As for Anita, who is now a second-year student at the vocational Electrical Engineering and Economy high school, this is just one step on her road towards creating her own product one day in the area of electrical engineering, accompanied with some cutting edge design.
