GoKawiilis transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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On July 19th, dozens of teams of high school students will begin a five-day, 630-mile road race from Fort Worth to Fort Stockton in Texas. But this is not your typical contest. The students design and build the cars themselves, using off-the-shelf parts and 3D printed materials. The winner is the team that accumulates the most driven miles. And the only fuel they can use to power their Frankenstein-looking vehicles comes from that mass of incandescent gas that hangs in our sky: the Sun.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the annual Solar Car Challenge, a contest that brings together high school students from around the country with the one goal to build the fastest, most efficient solar-powered car. The race was founded in 1993 by Dr. Lehman Marks, a Texas educator with a long-held interest in STEM. Students learn a variety of skills through the challenge, including project management, budgeting, fundraising, and engineering. But mostly, they have to build a race-worthy solar vehicle that can hopefully go the distance.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the annual Solar Car Challenge, a contest that brings together high school students from around the country with the one goal to build the solar-powered car that can go the distance
Lehman said that the Solar Car Challenge was born out of his frustration with the state of STEM education in the late ’80s and early ’90s. At the time, he had a group of students who were disengaged and uninspired by learning solely from textbooks, and seeking a way to spark their interest, he accepted an invitation from a friend at the University of North Texas, who was building a collegiate solar car for what was then a brand-new competition.
“We went up there and the kids were just mesmerized by the intricacy of the solar project,” he told me. “And all the way back from Desmond to Dallas, they kept yelling, ‘Doc, won’t you please let us build a solar car?’”
He relented, but quickly realized that high school students would never be able to compete fairly against college teams because they lacked the technical expertise and financial resources available to universities. Thus, the Solar Car Challenge for high school students was born, with the educational program officially kicking off in 1993 and the first national competition in 1995.
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