Summer 2021 Newsletter: Brizo Takes on the Sante Fe Trail

Bringing Home Some Hardware

After a whirlwind summer, Brizo and our race team are back home from competing in FSGP and ASC 2021.

In the face of several challenges, our team worked tirelessly to keep Brizo on the road in a leading position. Within the first few hours of FSGP, Brizo endured damage to the solar array and issues with charging. Despite this, we qualified for ASC in one day, and came home with a  3rd place trophy. ASC was no less challenging. The mountainous terrain of the Sante Fe trail presented us with huge hills, high temperatures, and unpredictable weather. Pushing through every issue thrown at us, we drove the 2nd most official distance, and finished the 1500+ mile trail in 4th place.



The dedication and talent among our team members lead us to a successful race. Keeping up the momentum, we are already working on designing and planning for the next competition!


Strategy Sponsor Highlight: Solcast

Throughout the race, our team made countless decisions like how fast we would go, who would drive the car or how many loops we would drive. To make many of these decisions, our strategy team leveraged data form a variety of sources. One important source of data was Solcast.


Solcast's detailed and accurate solar forecasts allowed the team to predict solar energy input and make decisions based on this real time data. The support of Solcast and our many other valued sponsors allowed us to push Brizo to the limits along the Santa Fe trail.


"Supporting the Illini Solar Car team with our global solar irradiance data was a true pleasure. Our team gets pretty excited about seeing new applications for solar forecasting data, and the team at Illini create a great case study in how such data could power the transportation sector in the future! Good on them for demonstrating the solar powered future in action!"

-Dr. Engerer, CTO of Solcast

Thank You!

To all our sponsors and supporters - we couldn't have done this without your support. After a successful race, we are very grateful for your support!