Students set on record with solar car journey

SYDNEY - A team of students left the Western Australian city of Perth on Saturday in an attempt to break the world record for traversing the continent with the lowest energy consumption in an electric car.

The University of New South Wales crew plan to make the 4,000-kilometer journey to Sydney across the country's harsh central desert using only 5.5 kW of energy per hour.

"Traditional cars are highly inefficient. When cruising, our car, 'Violet', uses about the same amount of energy as a four-slice toaster and we are aiming to use about eight times less energy per kilometer than a Tesla," said Chelsea Liang, operations lead for the Sunswift team.