630-Mile Solar-Powered Road Race: Sunlight as Fuel

On July 19th, dozens of high school teams will kick off a five-day, 630-mile solar-powered road race from Fort Worth to Fort Stockton, Texas. This isn’t a typical competition. The students design and build their own vehicles using off-the-shelf parts and 3D-printed materials. The winner is determined by the team that logs the most driven miles. And the only energy source for these Frankenstein-like machines is the Sun itself.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Solar Car Challenge, an annual contest that unites high school students from across the country with the singular mission of building the fastest, most efficient solar-powered car. Dr. Lehman Marks, a Texas educator with a deep passion for STEM, founded the race in 1993. Through the challenge, students gain hands-on experience in project management, budgeting, fundraising, and engineering. But above all, they must construct a race-worthy solar vehicle capable of covering the full distance.

Lehman explained that the Solar Car Challenge emerged from his frustration with STEM education in the late ’80s and early ’90s. At that time, he had a group of disengaged students who found little inspiration in textbooks alone. Searching for a way to ignite their curiosity, he accepted an invitation from a friend at the University of North Texas, who was building a collegiate solar car for a brand-new competition.

“We went up there and the kids were just mesmerized by the intricacy of the solar project,” Lehman recalled. “And all the way back from Desmond to Dallas, they kept yelling, ‘Doc, won’t you please let us build a solar car?’”

He eventually gave in, but quickly realized that high school students couldn’t fairly compete against college teams, which had far greater technical expertise and financial resources. That realization led to the creation of the Solar Car Challenge specifically for high school students. The educational program officially launched in 1993, and the first national competition followed in 1995.

Since its inception, the program has engaged over 85,000 students across 39 states and several countries, including Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain, and Singapore. Currently, more than 260 active high school solar projects are underway. The event alternates between on-track and cross-country formats. This year’s race is a grueling 630-mile trek across Texas, starting July 19th in Fort Worth and passing through Palestine, Round Rock, Fredericksburg, and San Angelo before finishing in Fort Stockton. Lehman noted that residents in these towns come out to celebrate the teams each time they roll through.

“It’s not just building a car,” Lehman emphasized. “It’s learning how to officially drive that car. In this coming event, one of the things I’ve been preaching to the kids is, before you ever get here, you need to put 500 miles in your car. You need to know, will it break? You need to know, even if it breaks, let it break in your own parking lot so you can fix it.”

The race typically features three competition categories: classic, advanced, and electric-solar power, where teams race electric vehicles charged by stationary solar stations. This year introduces a new division: cruiser. In this category, teams build four-seater vehicles with solar arrays integrated directly into the car’s body.

The decision to add this division came after years of people questioning whether solar cars could ever resemble real automobiles, rather than flat, highly aerodynamic vehicles with a driver crammed beneath a wide solar panel. Many of the cars barely look road-worthy, resembling a cross between futuristic spacecraft and high-tech go-karts.

Lehman said the organizers wanted students to build solar-powered vehicles that looked like actual passenger cars, with solar cells built into the bodywork, room for four passengers, four doors, and a trunk. He believes this helps demonstrate that solar transportation can have practical applications, allowing people to imagine what future solar-assisted passenger vehicles might actually look like.

“People would say, ‘Oh, this is really neat, but it’s not reality,’” he said. “Now we can show them what it could be. And I think that’s a step up.”

Blake Wood, a 17-year-old rising senior from Benbrook Middle-High School in a Fort Worth suburb, is one of the captains of the Old Rip Racing solar car team. His team is one of the few independent entries in the race. Their 14-member group includes students from three different schools, which Wood sees as their biggest strength. It allows students who would otherwise never meet to collaborate on a shared engineering challenge.

Wood says the team began planning about a year before the competition. Their earliest work involved paper sketches while they studied successful cars from previous years in the Classic Division, which is designed primarily for first- and second-year teams. They analyzed what made those other cars work well and incorporated those ideas into their own concepts. As the project progressed, the team improved its computer-aided design (CAD) skills, gradually turning hand-drawn ideas into digital engineering models. Learning the design software became part of the educational process.

“I think our vehicle, it looks really nice to me,” Wood said. “It’s unfortunate. So we don’t really get to see it that often all put together, and it feels like we’re always fixing something or making something and then putting something back on, and then we’re like, ‘Oh no, we need to weld in that area. Let’s take that electrical component back off.’”

While battery-electric vehicles have become mainstream, solar cars remain largely experimental. Several startups pursuing solar cars have either pivoted to more proven technology or gone bankrupt. Wood says he’s optimistic that solar vehicles have real long-term potential, as long as educational competitions like the Solar Car Challenge continue to expose students to renewable energy early on. As participants eventually enter professional careers, they can keep developing the innovations needed to make solar transportation commercially viable.

“We’re making progress,” Wood said. “I mean, we have a whole lot of high school students making them, and I think with the right equipment and a little more expertise than maybe all of us have, I think it could definitely be possible.”

Lehman agrees, pointing to startups like Aptera that are still pursuing the goal of a mass-market solar car. But he says commercialization has never been the real goal of the Solar Car Challenge.

“People say, ‘Well, are you trying to build a better solar car?’ Between you and me, I’m not,” he said. “I’m trying to build a student who is capable, who learns about commitment, dedication to a project, to learn about teamwork, to learn about engineering and battery technology. I’m trying to build a workforce and trying to build engineers.”