Chris Selwood is an electrical engineer by training, and he currently spends a lot of time around cars, but he didn’t take the most straightforward path.

“I spent a lot of my working life as a production manager for movies and travelling the world,” says Selwood, the event director of the World Solar Challenge.

But he has always had an interest in alternative energy and sustainable transport, and when he met the challenge’s founder, Danish adventurer Hans Tholstrup, in 1993, he was hooked.

“I was enthralled by the passion that the solar car builders brought to it. I got involved as a volunteer and have been running the event since 1999,” he said.

And after 12 years, this enthusiasm from the entrants–who come from all over the world–is still Selwood’s favourite part of the job. But the challenge comes from trying to keep the playing field equal for all competitors, no matter how much money and time they’ve been able to invest into their cars.

“This year we’ve encouraged teams from 22 different countries to come, and they come from very different backgrounds and have different resources but they all bring that passion for high-end engineering and environmental concerns.”

According to Selwood, the WSC does this by ensuring only a certain amount of energy can be stored, which means the success of a team relies on the efficiency of their solar panels and the aerodynamics of their vehicle, and not the quality of their batteries.

In addition to trying to create a fair competition, Selwood has to work out other planning issues to do with the race, such as coordinating teams and working out how to ensure GPS coverage in areas with no mobile phone reception (common on the remote track).

All of these unique aspects of the race make are what make it such a formidable challenge for entrants, and Selwood believes it’s great training for any engineering students, with many of the former student competitors going on to work for major corporations. And as the field of engineering is rapidly changing with the onset of new technologies, it is helping students to get real world experience during their studies.

“Engineering is getting less segmented and will have to become more multidisciplinary. For example, the integration of IT skills has become more important  (we see this internationally too) it’s not just about ‘solar’ or ‘automotive engineering’ it’s now about working in a high-tech space and being adaptive to change.”

Selwood also hopes that the skills students learn from the challenge and the technology it develops will one day lead to society reducing its transport footprint with electric cars.

“I think for many, many reasons we are all destined to drive electrical cars in cities, we could do it now if we had political will to do it,” he says.

RiAus Involvement

PDplus – World Solar Challenge, 10 August 2011