As you may know, we had our unveiling ceremony last Thursday. We invited our sponsors, some press and everyone at the university to see our brand new vehicle for the first time.
Elisabet unveils Skilži
Unfortunately, none of us has been set on “update homepage”-mode since then. Instead we switched right over to “final testing”-, “summing up”- and “packing”-mode; which is understandable since today is just four days away from takeoff. And, not very surprising, we might also have had a fling of the old “work as a nut to get the last pieces together”-mode, again.
Anyway – about the unveiling.
Above all, the ceremony meant the death of our mysterious “Baldos ‘X’” and the proud birth of our new prototype vehicle, Skilži. Skilži is pronounced something like “skilDJCHÍ” and means “icicle” in Sami. Baldos means “ice floe”, which is meant to associate the gentle movement of the vehicle with the almost frictionless motion of ice travelling on the surface of cold water. Skilži follows the same winter theme as Baldos but refers to the shape of the vehicle rather than the motion. The basic idea for the designers, Martin and Micke, was to make it like an extended drop of water – the shape with the least wind resistance of all. And, as you know, an extended and solidified drop of water equals an icicle.
Skilži, our new prototype-class vehicle
It was a good feeling to present our vehicle to everyone after so much time keeping it a secret. You can see a video from the unveiling here. Hopefully it’s going to serve us as an experimental vehicle for trying out new engine concepts and even more advanced solutions for fuel efficiency, which then can be applied in our standard car – Baldos II.
Another thing we did for the first time was to show Baldos II in city traffic. After all it is a street-legal car, so it was just a decision concerning “when” rather than “if” the citizens of Luleå would see it on the streets. The university office of communications made a nice video of the test drive which can be found here.
Baldos II in Luleå city center
We will list some of press that we received around the event in the “press” page soon. Among others we had the Swedish national television’s Rapport here. We will also send out a press invitation for the Baldos on Tour – read more about that here. Also, there’s a few more lessons learned from production to be told in the coming few days – next time about Mattias, Cameron and Nina’s work on the alternator. Stay tuned.
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