Solar car races are nationally organized events, with competition among dozens of colleges and universities. The challenge is to design, build, and race the best solar-powered vehicle. The mission is to promote educational excellence and team work among all competitors. To accomplish this goal, teams must integrate technical and business expertise across a range of disciplines.

Race rules prohibit the solar cars from receiving power from any source but the sun. Thus, each solar car undertakes the long journey guided only by rays of light. As a result, teams are challenged to design an extremely energy efficient car. Most solar cars cruise at highway speed using less than two horsepower.

Races typically cover thousands of miles and last many days. The races are run on regular highways, sharing the road with other traffic. Routes generally include stops in many towns and cities, and have historically run along famous highways such as old Route 66. Solar cars must obey all traffic regulations, and will typically travel at about 45 miles an hour. The vehicles must also meet strict safety requirements, to protect the driver and other vehicles.

Solar car bodies typically consist of layered carbon fiber cloth laminated together with resin. The bodies can be structural members or bolted to aluminum or steel space frames which provide the structural support. This allows for a rigid yet very lightweight structure. To construct a solar car body, an individual mold for the structure is fabricated. The mold results from building a full scale model of the car’s body from dense foam. The rigid metal space frame is designed using sophisticated finite-element analysis computer modeling. The frame must be able to safely withstand various impacts and g-forces, as specified in the race rules.

Solar car races are timed events, and the team with the lowest elapsed time for the entire multi-day event is declared the victor. Each day’s race is staged, with the cars leaving at preset intervals from a starting point. The goal is to travel a certain segment of the race that day, in the shortest possible time. There is much strategy involved, taking into account the weather (cloudy or sunny, etc.), the terrain, and the state of the vehicle.

During the race, thousands of onlookers and race supporters witness the great solar voyage.

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