ISGC Student Hands-On Spotlight: PrISUm: Iowa State University Solar Car Team
The Solar Car Team mission is to build a practical solar car that changes the paradigm of transportation. In doing so, they strive to inspire future generations to pursue their passions through education. This is their team’s motto, and they focus all of their efforts to stick to it. Typically, they try to accomplish this with a 2-4 year build cycle. In the past, they have built smaller, less challenging cars over the course of two years. With the challenges of COVID-19 and building larger multi-passenger vehicles, their build cycles have increased to 3-4 years.
This photo shows members removing old solar cells in preparation for wind tunnel testing. A few weeks after this picture was taken, the team performed wind tunnel testing on the car, which provided an abundance of helpful data that will be used to improve the performance and aerodynamic efficiency of designs for the next car’s aeroshell. From left to right, Kiley Kennedy and Kishan Patel.