Rice University fields solar car in this week’s Shell Eco-marathon in downtown Houston

HOUSTON — (March 28, 2012) — With gas prices rising to near-record levels, students at Rice University are working toward a future in which cars don’t need gas at all.

A Rice student club will field the university’s first solar car in this week’s Shell Eco-marathon Americas, which takes place Thursday through Sunday at Discovery Green in downtown Houston.

Nearly 140 teams will take to the track on city streets around the park to determine which cars are most efficient. They will race in several categories based on whether they run on gas, alternative fuels, batteries or solar power.

The 16-member Rice team formed last year and raised more than $80,000 to design and build a vehicle with help from Rice professors, including faculty adviser Andrew Dick, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science.

“I’m impressed that they’ve set this up more like an engineering firm than a student club,” said Dick, who led a fall semester classroom through the design process.

The students studied other solar cars before deciding on their unique design, in which the solar panels serve as the car’s roof with the driver underneath. The car is required to complete a six-mile course – 10 laps around the 0.6-mile Discovery Green track – in 15 minutes or less. Cars that complete the course will then be rated for energy efficiency.

The Rice car, if all goes well, will finish its races with more power in its battery than it had at the start.

Club co-president Allison Garza, a Rice sophomore, said she is delighted with the project as her team races to prepare the car for its debut. “Besides getting to do a really cool engineering project, I also feel it helps the environment, in some sense,” she said. “Maybe one day in the next 10, 20 years we might come up with a technology that will revolutionize the way cars are built. That’s exciting to me.”

The Rice team will also display its solar car at the university’s UnConvention April 12-14. The car will be part of the annual Engineering Design Showcase, which will take place at Tudor Fieldhouse and provide the public an opportunity to see the range of projects students are working on in fields that include bioengineering, global health, civil and environmental engineering, computer, electrical and mechanical engineering and more.

Source: Rice University