Students at Okemos High School have been hard at work over the past year building a solar powered race car to compete the Solar Car Challenge.
A national high school competition of solar cars. Okemos will be one of approximately 20 exclusive high schools across the entire nation to compete.
The Solar Car Challenge takes place in Texas every year. In July 2019, the competition will take place on the Texas Motor Speedway track. Over a period of four days, teams will compete to drive the most laps possible with their solar car. The team that drives the most miles over the four-day period, using only energy from the sun to power their car, will win.
The purpose of our club is to provide students interested in engineering or business with a unique opportunity to explore their passion outside of a traditional classroom setting. Students have an opportunity to apply what they have been learning and supplement their education with a hands on experience. The club provides a platform where students can conceptualize, design, engineer, develop, budget, market, advertise, and compete. They will develop skills and explore interests that they will pursue beyond high school and apply in their future professional pursuits.
As of today, their solar car is driveable but still needs a lot of work before it is ready to compete and win. They do not have any spare parts such as tires, wheels, batteries, etc. They want to be prepared, so if something were to break, they wouldn’t have to stop competing. They are also responsible for paying a $1500 race registration fee and need a trailer to safely store and transport their car. In the last year, they raised over $8,000 and would like to raise at least an additional $8,000 in the next eight months. Although there is much to be done, they believe that they are on the right track to be successful.
Team member Will Jones on the project “This is has been an incredible experience to be apart of, we have come a long way since beginning our project last year and are super excited to compete next summer in the Solar Car Challenge. We have been incredibly lucky to have some very generous individuals and businesses who have donated their time and money to our project. We still have a long way to go before we are going to be ready to race but we are on a great track and looking forward to what this year brings.”
