Vattenfall Solar Team laps competition with Citrix

The rubber is about to meet the road for the Vattenfall Solar Team. Next week, the group of 17 engineering students from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) will rev things up at the Solar Challenge Morocco, a 2,500-kilometre race for solar-powered cars built and run by the world’s leading technical universities. And it has put the wheels in motion to notch yet another win, leveraging technology from Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTXS), to create a secure digital workspace where it can share the information needed to ensure its car and drivers perform at their best.

Enabling the Ultimate Remote Workforce

“You can imagine that during a race you are in the middle of nowhere – the Sahara Desert or in the mountains – and have limited connectivity, sometimes nothing at all,” said team spokesperson Tanya Spee.

Using Citrix® ShareFile, the team, which has won the five-day race seven of the 10 times it has been run, must do everything from designing, building and racing the car, to creating their own IT environment, can securely and reliably share critical information in real time to drive optimal performance and share their progress with fans around the world.

“We use Citrix ShareFile to share our files, media content and all our videos between our three media cars in the race and our back-office in the Netherlands and quickly get our story out to the press and social media so that people can follow our progress day to day, or even minute to minute,” said Spee.

The team also uses real-time race data on weather, road conditions, and car performance, correlated with historic data to ensure their car is as efficient as possible.

Playing to Win

“Having the right digital workspace technology has been more important than ever with designing and building our solar car during COVID-times,” said Spee. “Citrix is playing a critical role and will be instrumental in helping the team win again.”