With the debut of its Mercury 8 car, the Illinois State University Solar Car Team received a hearty sendoff before they embark on the American Solar Challenge.
The event by Innovators Educational Foundation brings together teams from the United States and abroad in a race of solar cars.
The challenge involves a driver in the solar car not just driving but managing the vehicle’s battery, motor and array to continue power.
“It gets a little boring in there sometimes, I’m not going to lie, if there’s not a lot of things going on around you, then you just kind of zone out,” said Mac Brody, president of the team. “There’s no music in there, and there’s no air conditioning… but it’s a lot of communicating with the pit crew.”
As the car makes its journey, starting in Minnesota down to Texas and partially along historic Route 66, it is escorted by lead and trail vehicles to alert motorists. Along the 1,500-mile journey, competitors do not forget it is still a race.
“When there’s a lot of high traffic times, which there are, especially in the track event, it’s overtaking and trying to figure out the best way to take a turn while also driving efficiently, and a lot of that can be a little bit challenging sometimes,” Brody said.
Before the challenge begins on July 25, the team will spend three days in Minnesota in the qualifying event, the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix. The event requires teams to pass those safety checks as they run a defined number of laps over a single day or combined laps over two consecutive days.
To be the number one team in the race, though, Brody said the strategies are similar.
"The biggest deal with that is to make sure that we’re saving our battery pack for when we absolutely need it and being at the max speed that we can without burning out the entire battery pack,” she said. “So, mechanically, we’re in a very efficient place. Electrically, they’re working on getting all the panels soldered up. There are a couple that we’re swapping to make sure that they’re at the max efficiency possible.”
Different experiences
While Brody serves as the team’s mechanical lead focusing on car pieces like brakes and wheel bearings, Shane Burke is the team’s electrical lead. He works on the battery of the car, its motor and its solar array.
“So, we try to stick to a two-year build cycle. We’ll have a new [car] every two years, but that doesn’t mean that the electrical system is being changed from the ground up every two years,” he said. “We may do a new set of solar cells every year or every year and a half, depending on how things roll out.”
Burke is a new driver on the team but has the experience of knowing much of the strategy a driver needs.
“I’ve always been on the strategy side of things, with all the electrical stuff…battery capacity, with all of the array stuff, how much power are we taking in, how much power are we using,” he said. “So now I get to kind of see the other side of that coin, which is exciting for me personally because I’ve kind of always been the one in the pit, talking to the driver saying, ‘OK, you can go a bit faster now, you can slow down a little bit.'”
Burke said it is a team effort with other members in the race’s lead or trail cars constantly working on strategy.
Outside of just the racing, Burke and Brody both said the work on the car has helped bolster their career experience and be more attractive to employers after school.
“I just graduated with the computer science department, and I actually used this in my interview that I had with John Deere,” said Burke. “I’m going to start working after the race in their displays department, so working on displays for tractors and construction equipment.”
Mechanical engineering major Brody also said the solar car team has done a lot for her experience before entering the workforce, but as is the case with many collegiate extracurriculars, there were some unintended rewards, too.
“I have a lot to thank for this. I’ve met some of my best friends through this,” she said. “I have kind of found and learned a lot about myself and about the way that I operate, the things that I like doing professionally through this, and I would not have gotten that anywhere else.”
Solar send-off
The Solar Car Team had support from not just friends and family members, but also faculty from ISU. Ivan Medvedev, chair of the ISU physics department, was one of them.
“Well, absolutely excited and proud of the team, students all of their achievements,” he said.
He’s not the only one excited about the team. Medvedev said companies including Tesla and Rivian offer special application portals for team members of a solar car project.
“So, if you want to apply and work at a high-tech company, those companies realize the value of the skills that students acquire, and if you look at the car, they build it from scratch,” Medvedev said.
To build a car capable of going 60 mph with the power of the sun is no small feat, he said. While not everyone sticks with the club, Medvedev said those who do find success in a variety of fields after graduation.
For his further support, Medvedev will be in a lead car along with the team. He also said he will probably be going on grocery runs for the students as well.
"It’s great having a community and a lot of this stuff makes the long nights go much faster,” said Burke. “It makes the hard work a little bit easier knowing that there are people out here supporting you. We have a ton of people in the administrative side and the faculty side of the school that consistently show up and consistently help out and do just show that support.”
The public showing also helps ease the tension of racing against teams from schools out of the country or with name recognition, like Stanford or MIT.
“It’s definitely intimidating. I’ll say we try not to think about it as much, because at some point, you do what you got to do,” Brody said. “It is incredibly rewarding when you are able to beat really prestigious teams. In 2024, for our road event, we beat Purdue. So, there are schools like that that we have surpassed.”
ISU will be a checkpoint during the American Solar Challenge and a rest point for the teams on their racing journey. The public can stop and see the various teams as they arrive to Horton Field House on July 26 and 27.
