CAMERON TUESLEY: I mean how did it come about?
I came up with an idea, but why I came up with that idea I honestly don’t know.
I was on a flight on the way back from the UK, I had a lot of time on my hands and something
popped into my brain that I think had been seeded there for 20 years.
I thought ‘you know what, it’s time we did this’.
ANTHONY PRIOR: Cameron, one of our founding members, he gave me a call and says ‘hey
Anthony, do you want to build a solar car’?
I said ‘what do we know about solar cars Cameron’?
CAMERON TUESLEY: Australia’s got a lot of space that’s just open empty space that
gets an enormous amount of sun and to me it seemed completely illogical that we weren’t
taking advantage of this and one of the reasons I think we weren’t is we need to have the
local skills and talent to understand that that is a real potential and we can do that.
My day job is running an IT company and I see so many young professionals with incredible
talent going overseas post graduation because they say that’s where the opportunities are.
I think we need to change that mindset, we need to be able to show people no the opportunities
are here because the talent's here.
JASON QUEEN: I developed a tablet which just shows the speed, shows the battery power, shows
the battery percentage, all sorts of temperatures and that can be used in all of the cars; lead
vehicle, the chase vehicle and as well as the solar car.
In any racing, IT is extremely important, but in solar racing, without it, there would
be no car, there would be no racing.
It’s the brains behind everything we do.
ANTHONY PRIOR: This competition has been running for over 20 years now and we see the technology
from this competition is starting to move its way into mainstream cars now so it really
does push the cutting edge of electric cars and solar power and clean energy in the modern world.
We can run this car for free across the continent at 85k an hour using the power of the sun
and I think that’s just astonishing.
CAMERON TUESLEY: Goal number one is to finish. It’s an incredibly arduous race, last race
less than half the teams made it across the finish line.
ANTHONY PRIOR: We were a green team, we made a lot of rookie mistakes so I think over the
last two years we’ve been practicing a lot and drilling and learning more about the car
and really getting ourselves together as a team so we’re a much better team now than
we were before.
CAMERON TUESLEY: Goal number two we’d like to pick up probably about three spots from
where we were last time.
So we finished just seventh in the last race and the reality is most of this boils down
to the quality of the students and the quality of the engineers that are involved and on
that metric, we have an exceptionally strong team, so we’re hoping to show that.
AMY GUNNELL: It opens up a world of opportunities being a part of something like this.
Not only do you get really close to a lot of professional people that then could potentially
offer you employment through that way, it also looks really good on your resume to other
employers.
JASON QUEEN: I myself have applied for the BMW internship, which one of our team members
has already been on.
That’s a three-month internship in Germany.
I’ve also been employed by one of our sponsors because of the work that I’ve done.
CAMERON TUESLEY: We’re working with an amazing bunch of students.
QUT brings incredible students to this team and we’ve had an opportunity to work with
them, mentor them and have some amazing life experiences along the way.
ANTHONY PRIOR: A combination of a strong alumni of people who have done it before and a new
wave of young students coming through with their passion and enthusiasm, we want to keep
this going indefinitely.
CAMERON TUESLEY: We’re hoping to build a high performance solar electric sports car
that’s road registrable.
ANTHONY PRIOR: The idea is hopefully it can be registered and you can drive the solar
car to the shops and do the shopping, take the kids to school and do real life things
in a real life solar car and that’s our goal.