News
April 30, 2008
CalSol would like to thank Advanced Circuits (www.4pcb.com) for its recent sponsorship. We look forward to a continued partnership with Advanced Circuits.
April 7, 2008
CalSol is excited to announce a recent partnership with Training-Classes.com, an online directory of training, education, learning, and development programs and providers. Training-Classes.com's directory includes information on Instructor Led Training (ILT), courseware, eLearning, home study and self paced learning resources. Training-Classes.com's $1,000 sponsorhip qualifies it for the Bronze donor level.
March 6, 2008
CalSol has recieved a $5,000 sponsorship from The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). This qualifies CITRIS for Silver Sponsor status, making them the first sponsor for the current CalSol project to earn the distinction. To learn about becoming a sponsor, please visit our Sponsorship Page.
December 17, 2007
The molds for the car have arrived. We have sanded them down and put on the first layer of dry wall. Over winter break we are going to sand down the dry wall and proceed with painting the molds. We plan on getting the molds all finished up over winter vacation, so hopefully we'll be well on our way in building our shell once spring semester comes along.
We also want to thank Google for donating $2000 to our team. Also earlier in the semester the Mechanical Engineering Department donated $3000 to us, so both of them are Bronze sponsorship status. To see a list of our sponsors or find more information on becoming a sponsor, please visit our Sponsorship page.
We have also uploaded some pictures taken of the molds, and of us putting drywall on, along with the team picture of the 2007-2008 CalSol team. They are under the album titled Ursola II.
November 5, 2007
The race schedule for the North American Solar Challenge has been released!. Also, a map of the route can be viewed here.
September 18, 2007
The EECS Department just gave us a generous donation of $2,500. This qualifies the department for Bronze sponsorship status!
September 16, 2007
We will be finished with the preliminary designs by October 1st in time for for submission to the North American Solar Car Challenge for review. We will begin machining the suspension by the first week of October. Additonally, we are having a private company machine the plug for us, so that is expected to be done within a month. We will then fine tune the plug; we aim to construct and complete the female mold before winter vacation.
June 24, 2007
We are going to begin working on our shell molds over the next few week as our next car begins to become a physical reality.
February 24, 2007
CalSol welcomes its newest sponsor, Green Mountain Engineering. If you would like to support CalSol, please visit the Sponsorship page. As part of the university, all donations are tax-deductible. Plus, we offer some great perks!
February 20, 2007
Exciting news! The NASC 2008 regulations have been released with some major rule changes. Most notably, the driver must be sitting at an angle of at most 27 degrees. Consequently, we are in the process of redesigning the chassis and other components of our car in compliance of the new rules. We should be begin construction of the car by the end of spring semester.
October 28, 2006
CalSol is currently finishing the design stage of our newest car and preparing for construction. The team has spent literally hundreds of hours designing and running simulations and is ready to make this new solar car a reality.
September 21, 2005
CalSol's Beam Machine is in the new Lexus Hybrid TV commercial! Check out our photo gallery from the filming and see the commercial itself!
August 5, 2005
Read about CalSol's experience in the North American Solar Challenge 2005 here and check out all the pictures in the photo gallery.
August 2, 2005
We've posted some of the photos we took during NASC 2005.
July 30, 2005
Beam Machine has successfully completed all 2494 miles of the 2005 North American Solar Challenge, scoring CalSol 2nd place in the Stock Class, 25 minutes away from 1st. Thanks to all of our sponsors for making this possible!
July 23, 2005
Beam Machine has made it all the way to the Winnipeg, MB stage stop of the North American Solar Challenge 2005! Check the standings here, and follow our progress via GPS.
May 24, 2005
We've posted our latest photos from the Formula Sun Grand Prix 2005! Check them out in the photo gallery.
May 20, 2005
CalSol has placed 3rd in Stock Class in the Formula Sun Grand Prix 2005, completing 175 laps totalling 368 miles! We will be home in Berkeley in a few days and should have plenty of pictures. Go Bears!
May 18, 2005
We managed to put in the required laps to qualify for the North American Solar Challenge 2005! Beam Machine has been running strong and we hope to put down more laps tomorrow.
May 17, 2005
We've made it through scrutineering at Topeka and Beam Machine should be hitting the track tomorrow!
May 15, 2005
Team CalSol has made it in one piece to Heartland Park in Topeka, KS for the Formula Sun Grand Prix 2005. More updates will follow.
April 30, 2005
We got the chance to take some video of our car in motion. Check it out!
March 17, 2005
Our chassis is nearly complete and the suspension has been test fitted. Check out the photo gallery.
March 11, 2005
Check out the progress we made last month on constructing wheel fairings and suspension tuning in the photo gallery!
February 22, 2005
Intel has become our newest sponsor, donating two Latitude D600 notebooks to CalSol! The machines will be used to develop firmware for our newest vehicle and track telemetry and simulation data during ASC2005. Thank you for your generous support Intel!
January 17, 2005
The first meeting of the semester will be held in 531 Cory on Wednesday, January 19 at 6:00pm. Also, we've finished welding the chassis and are nearing completion of the suspension. Check out the pictures of suspension machining, chassis completion and telemetry system in the photo gallery.
October 19, 2004
We've been working on assembling the new chassis lately. Check out the photo gallery. We've also made progress on the shells and suspension. More photos will be posted soon.
August 26, 2004
CalSol would like to welcome its newest sponsor, R-Electric Car Company, a subsidiary of Whistler Investments.
July 11, 2004
We've been working on the shells over the past few weeks and got a lot done. The shells have been trimmed and joined, and also narrowed to meet the new specifications. Check out the photo gallery.
April 26, 2004
Last Saturday, April 17, we took Solar Bear to campus for CalDay. We got a chance to show off our work and tell people about the upcoming race. Check out the photo gallery. We would also like to thank our new sponsor, WageWorks for their support of our project.
April 5, 2004
We spent this weekend laying up the new top shell. Friday we did a practice lay up, Saturday we did the outer layer, and Sunday we did the inner layer. Check out the photo gallery.
March 13, 2004
We spent this weekend on the final mold preparations before the lay-up process. Friday night we applied mold release wax and today we prepared the vacuum bagging and cut some of the honeycomb core. Check out the photo gallery.
February 23, 2004
We took Solar Bear out for a trip to the East Bay Municipal Utilities District in Oakland for their Engineers' Week. We would like to thank EBMUD for allowing us this opportunity to show off our car. Check out the photo gallery.
February 16, 2004
Lately we've been working on getting the shell molds ready for the lay-up process. This weekend we sprayed them with primer. Check out the photo gallery.
January 20, 2004
We'd like to welcome our newest sponsor, RevChem Plastics and thank them for their generous donation. For more information on sponsoring us or to see a list of our current sponsors, please check the sponsorship page.
January 9, 2004
We are currently in the midst of preparing the molds for the new shell. They should be ready for the lay-up soon. Check back later for pictures.
November 10, 2003
Last Saturday the mechanical team made a trip out to the Richmond Field Station to get good look at Solar Bear and learn a few things about suspension. They completely disassembled the double A-arm suspension and then reassembled it. Jeremy also weighed every part so we'd have an accurate idea of what to expect for our next car. See the Photos section for cool pictures.
September 19, 2003
We will be having two trips out to Richmond Field Station to see the solar car and show off the workshop. Both trips will cover the same material so there is no need to go to both. The first will be this Saturday and the second will be one week from Saturday. We'll be meeting at 10am at the west gate of campus (map). We'll be driving out to RFS and probably be returning in the early afternoon.
September 13, 2003
This website has been totally revamped to use PHP. It should be easier to update and a little bit prettier.
August 27, 2003
There will be an infosession on Tuesday, September 2 for all new and prospective members. It will be held in 531 Cory Hall (the Wang Room) at 5:45 pm. There will be someone at the North and West entrances of the building to escort you in case the building is locked. This is a good chance to talk to current members and find out what it takes to be a member of CalSol.
August 4, 2003
CalSol has returned from American Solar Challenge 2003 where we placed 2nd in our class! We'd like to thank all our sponsors for their support and to the team members who spent three weeks of their vacation traveling the country. We'd also like to again thank the University of Kentucky for their selfless gesture in lending CalSol their motor. Hope to see you at ASC 2005! Check out the ASC 2003 Overview and photo gallery.
June 29, 2003
CalSol would like to welcome its newest sponsor, Powerlight! Powerlight is a Berkeley based company specializing in solar technology for corporate use. CalSol is excited about the prospects of working with Powerlight to further solar technology. See the exciting projects that powerlight is working on here. Thanks again for your support!
See why Solar Bear is in the news!
May 27, 2003
The FSGP overview and photos are up! FSGP
May 22, 2003
We've just returned from Kansas and Formula Sun Grand Prix 2003 where we placed 1st in our class! We've also qualified for American Solar Challenge in July. We're sorting through the photos and logs and will post more information in a day or two.
April 22, 2003
See new pictures of Solar Bear! The car is coming along nicely, check out the photo gallery.
April 15, 2003
Well, we spent all night Friday getting ready for CalDay but the fates were against us. It was windy and rained hard all day Saturday so we didn't want to risk taking the car over to campus. Sorry for anyone who looked for us there, we really wanted to go but who wants to see a solar car in the rain?
April 4, 2003
We're getting ready for CalDay. CalDay is Saturday, April 12. We hope anyone who is able to can come over to campus and see the car, its looking good. We'll be setting up in our usual location on the grass outside of Evans Hall. We're going to attempt to make out canopy over the weekend, it should be interesting...
April 1, 2003
Spring Break worksessions went well. The trailer is almost done and, if the weather holds, we should be able to get it finished off this weekend.
March 20, 2003
Spring Break is almost here. We'll be having worksessions almost every day to get the car done. The campus shuttle runs between RFS and campus Monday thru Thursday from 8am to 6pm or so if you want to get out there. There is also a bit of machining left to do if you want to stay on campus...