Team Ethanol

Jane’s Blog

As the Team packs up this morning and flies and drives off in their various directions, our journey through the outback and our participation in the World Solar Challenge would not be complete without a few worthy ‘thank you’s’

THANK YOU to all our sponsors for their belief in our Team. We mentioned you at all and every opportunity and hope you will stick with us for Team Ethanol 2009. We will be in touch with you when we return to Mackay Queensland for individual feedback.

A special thanks to United Nations of Beer (www.theUNOB.com) for their fantastic stubby holders which saw us through the trip. Not only were we the only team in the WSC with team Stubby holders, but we discovered they had other uses as well. Both in Darwin and in Adelaide when we had to get emissions testing done on our Saab car, the cost was 4 stubby holders. We started bartering and using the stubby holders as currency and a negotiation tool and it was so great to see other teams using their UNOB Team Ethanol stubby holders at events.

With great pride, the Team would like to thank McAlear Marketing for their amazing work. Adele McAlear ensured the smooth flow of our website, blog, photos and ensured we were kept up to date with important emails and messages. During our journey through the outback, Adele was usually the only ‘outside’ contact for the team. With her help, we were able to ensure our friends and family we were doing fine, which was a big relief when we were in the remotest of areas. Cheers to you Adele, may you enjoy your shot glasses obtained for you en route, with our deepest thanks.

Thanks (deeply) to our friends, family and supporters who clicked onto our Team Ethanol website regularly, read our blogs and viewed our photos. I spent many many hours compressing photos in the most bizarre locations to ensure our web was as current as possible.

We had a lot of pride in our website, blog and photos and hope you enjoyed them. There are still about 1,000 photos you haven’t seen. In the next few weeks, the Team will be putting together a slide show of photos and uploaded onto the Team Ethanol website for your viewing, so please continue to check back with us.

A final note, should any one of our followers want to become an official sponsor for Team Ethanol 2009, please contact us. We’re going to start early for sponsorship so we can show up like the University of Michigan Team back up trailer, resembling a rock star roadie vehicle. They sold solar cells for $50 each and every sponsor was written on the trailer. As our ethanol vehicle doesn’t have solar cells, perhaps we should raise funds by ‘cups of ethanol’?!! Sounds good to us.

Once again. Thanks very very much to you all!

With much appreciation

Team Ethanol 2007

Team Ethanol blog 28 October 2007

So Sunday dawned and the end was in sight. All of the travelling was done, now it’s just the all day display in Adelaide’s Victoria Square and the Awards to look forward to tonight. Still didn’t really get a sleep in, daylight saving started this morning, so we lost an hour of sleep…just can’t win!

All of the Greenfleet cars spent the night in Victoria Square with security guards in attendance. Team Ethanol was in attendance for the public display from 9am to 3pm with the BiosFuel team and the Annesley College girls. That was it…none of the other teams bothered to turn up. Well, actually one other team obviously went to “Rent-a-bimbo” and hired a couple of tight t-shirt, spray on jeans, vacuous heads to stand in for their team’s actual presence…pity they didn’t know a damn thing about the car!

By early afternoon Adelaide’s weather was visibly disintegrating, blowing a gale with intermittent showers. But the crowds braved the elements and we had a pretty good rollup with lots of interest in the Saab, distributing the rest of our promotional material.

After the display we still had a few things to do so it was a bit of a rush to get to the town hall for the awards which were due to start at 6pm. And you guessed it, the organisers(?) had decided to start half an hour later, but didn’t get around to telling the teams. So we had hundreds of people clustered around the locked town hall doors freezing to death…brilliant!

Anyway, they finally got their act together and it was a bit like DJ’s Boxing Day sale, security flung open the doors and dived out of the way, while several hundred iceblocks with legs stampeded into the warmth!

The awards themselves were greeted with unbridled enthusiasm and the highlights were:
The Dutch Nuon solar team won line honours for the fourth time on the trot and have announced their intention to try for five.
The Australian Aurora solar team was the bridesmaid, also for the fourth time, but won the Team Participation Award.
The German solar team won the design award, for their stunning upright-seat solar car, with the most beautiful flowing lines…sort of reminiscent of a Cornish pastie on wheels.

There were three awards possible for the Greenfleet teams and we certainly didn’t expect to win an award, back to backing in this environment is virtually impossible. The one we took out last time (The Environment Award), was won by a Welsh team and they thoroughly deserved it. It was basically a family project and they had to beg, borrow or steel the components to build a solar car from the ground up. The effort to energy ratio was incredibly low so it was environmentally perfect.

The Greenfleet Award was won by the Biobike, for having the lowest carbon emissions per kilometre. Almost impossible to beat with anything other than another bike. The fact that it belched huge clouds of smoke and didn’t finish the event under it’s own power, didn’t seem to matter.

The Production Class Award is the one that I really have a problem with. It should have been won by the Swiss Twike Team and instead was won by the Smart For Two Car. According to the WSC convenor it won because, and I quote, “every time it makes an appearance it makes a statement”. Good grief, is that the most technical judging criterion you’ve ever heard, or what! This was also the only Greenfleet car to be non-compliant with the compulsory WSC signage and rarely even bothered to turn up at the compulsory community events. You’ve probably seen these cars around, tiny and very upright with a flat back. And by the way in my opinion, the statement it makes is, “God I’m ugly and my bum fell off”.

Anyway it’s all done and dusted and we can’t wait to get home. The saddest part of the whole event was the tearful farewell to newfound friends from around Australia and the world.

Keep checking the website as we will be publishing our fuel economy, performance and emission testing results in the near future.

A massive thank you as well to those who followed us daily including our family, friends and new followers.