Punch Powertrain Solar Team becomes Agoria Solar Team

We have a very big announcement to make: we are proud to announce that we are now officially called the Agoria Solar Team and Punch Powertrain will pass the torch to Agoria as main sponsor of our team.

INVESTING IN INNOVATION

It is not completely out of the blue that Agoria will be our new main sponsor: the Belgian Technology Federation was already involved as a sponsor in the past (2017-2018). This year, Agoria will further expand its collaboration to work with us on building the eighth Belgian solar car, with the ultimate goal of ending first at the World Solar Challenge in Australia in October of 2019.

"What makes the collaboration between Agoria and the Solar Team so powerful, is the strong link between the two organisations. Using technological innovations to contribute to a better world is a strong basis for the partnership. A basis that should lead the Agoria Solar Team to innovations that are necessary to make the best Belgian solar car ever," says Marc Lambotte, CEO of Agoria.

BIG AMBITIONS WITH NEW MAIN SPONSOR

Although we still have to get used to our new name, it certainly does not imply that our team mentality has changed. Our motivation to reach even better results than the previous team has only increased. We also feel Agoria's enthusiasm to take our Solar Team to a higher level, both technically and in terms of marketing and communication.

"It's great to see that Agoria is ready with us for all possible challenges. Their support, drive and enthusiasm gives us the boost we need to achieve a great result in Australia", says Willem-Jan Claes, team leader of the Agoria Solar Team.

With our new main sponsor, we also saw this as an opportunity to refresh our logo. Our team and spirit are still the same; therefore, we decided to keep our three green stripes, but to give them a modern new look.

CONTINUING THE COOPERATION

The fact that Punch Powertrain is no longer in our team name, does not imply that the company is out of the picture. 

Punch Powertrain has been a loyal partner of the team for eight years now, six of which as our main sponsor. They supported us in every possible way, both on a technical level as for marketing and business relations. This resulted in four solar cars: the Umicar Imagine, the Indupol One, the Punch One and the Punch 2, but that is not where the collaboration ends. For the development of the BluePoint, what will be the eighth Belgian solar car, Punch Powertrain will continue to support the team on a technical level.

Our collaboration with Punch Powertrain started with a focus on reliability for the fifth Belgian solar car, the Indupol One. For the Punch One, the goal shifted from reliability to performance and for the Punch 2, innovation was added on top of performance. With impressive results, because the last solar car not only won the innovation award in the World Solar Challenge in 2017, but also won first place in the most extreme race for solar cars in Chile.