Crowdfund Corner: contribute towards a new solar-powered car!

T3’s curated selection of the best crowdfunded projects in the works right now

Crowdfund Corner is T3.com's not-very-regular roundup of the best crowdfunded products around at the moment - we only post when there's a crowdfunded project that's really worth getting excited about. Usually - but not always - these will be available via Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

Solar Team Great Britain has launched a Kickstarter campaign, to help develop a car capable of winning the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge race in October. 

The team is backed by over a dozen sponsors and the teams patrons include Red Dwarf’s Robert Llewellyn. 

The Kickstarter campaign seeks to raise between £20-26k, around 5% of the total target. 

The solar race team is set to compete in the biennial 3,022 km World Solar Challenge race across Australia later this year. It is seeking to win the Cruiser (4-seater) class, created specifically to help bring the technology into production road vehicles. 

STGB’s first official designs of the shell of the car have also been revealed - known as the STGB_C5. 

The design has undergone refinement and analysis using the extreme power of a Cray supercomputer cluster so it can maximise efficiency as well as large surface area to generate power. 

Aerodynamic modelling is being led by STGB’s technical director Paul Kealy, also an Airbus aerospace engineer. The access to the Cray supercomputer cluster - owned by sponsor CFMS - has cut aerodynamic modeling from over 2 months to less than 2 days of processing time.

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Dan Grabham

Dan is a previous Editor for T3.com and covered the latest in computing, home entertainment and mobile tech. He's also the former Deputy Editor of TechRadar and former Editor of Lifehacker UK. Dan has written for numerous computing and lifestyle magazines and has also written a book, too. You'll see him pop up in numerous places, having been quoted in or on The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, ITN News, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4 and Sky News Radio.