After driving over 2,095 miles across the country, the University of Michigan Solar Car Team claimed their 10th Electrek American Solar Challenge title on July 27, winning the race despite multiple mechanical issues in a preliminary round. Stretching between Nashville, Tenn. and Casper, Wyo., the ASC tests engineering project teams from U.S. and Canadian universities on their ability to construct a solar-powered car and tackle an eight-day endurance race.
Astrum, the team’s 17th solar car since its founding in 1989, took 4th place in the 1,800-mile Bridgestone World Solar Challenge race across Australia’s Outback in 2023. After the car returned home in early 2024, the team faced several design challenges when adapting the car to a new set of regulations for the ASC. U-M alum Daniel Benedict, the team’s project manager, said the World Solar Challenge had more lenient guidelines than the U.S.-based race.
“The main philosophy behind designing the car for Australia, and just generally designing a solar car, is you don’t want to have any extra space, any extra weight that you don’t need,” Benedict said. “The World Solar Challenge regulations are much lighter than the American Solar Challenge regulations. So when we were designing and building for the race in Australia, it was minimum viable product to pass regulations and get the absolute best performance out of it.”
The ASC’s regulations include a more extensive roll cage with a front hoop that mounts below the driver’s shoulders. Rackham student Aidan Goettsch, the engineering director, said adjusting to the ASC’s stricter roll cage rules required the team to redesign both the size of the car’s canopy and shape of the solar array attached to Astrum.
“We had to design a new roll cage that mounted to the car in places that weren’t designed to ever hold cage mounting, and it had to fit in a space that wasn’t designed to have anything in there,” Goettsch said. “Because of that, the canopy, the top shell of the car that goes around the driver’s head, had to get bigger … and there was actually part of the solar array there. So we had to take the whole solar array off of the front half of the car and replace that with a solar array that was designed to go around the roll cage structure.”
In order to qualify for the ASC, teams must first compete in the Formula Sun Grand Prix, which took place from July 16 to 18. During the FSGP, teams can either complete 98 laps over two consecutive days or 66 laps in a single day to advance to the ASC.
On the 18th lap of the FSGP, Astrum rolled on a turn, destroying the windshield, damaging the solar array and scratching the aerosurface. Benedict said that the result was devastating, but the team rallied together to repair the car overnight.
“We were just trying to figure out whether the damage was recoverable,” Benedict said. “We made the decision (that) we made it this far. We worked all summer to get this thing compliant. If it’s humanly possible, we’ll get it done. If it’s not then, then it just wasn’t humanly possible.”
On the second day, Astrum faced mechanical problems again when the car abruptly shut off after a few laps in the rain. The team replaced the motor controller with a final spare and then shorted the new part when they discovered that the motor itself was dead. Unable to race, they booked a last-minute flight for a team member in Ann Arbor to bring a spare motor and asked other teams at the event for help. Principia College, a small liberal arts college in Elsah, Ill., gave the U-M team a spare set of parts, allowing them to rejoin the race before their own reinforcements arrived.
Rising Engineering sophomore Kelly Park, one of the team’s mechanical engineers, said members of the Solar Car Team never complained about the weather conditions they worked in, instead focusing solely on Astrum’s survival.
“The only thing we had in mind was, ‘We’re gonna get this car on the track,’ ” Park said. “Our team has a tendency to not care about the rain, I noticed. Running out there in the rain in front of all these other teams who expected us to fall down … any team could have experienced this and just not really recovered from it, but that just felt really good.”
Rising LSA junior Alex Patov, the team’s business specialist, said the success at the FSGP came not just from their ability to physically repair the car but also from their motivation to continue problem-solving.
“There’s a lot of both the technical side of things but also the motivational side, the team spirit, that was maintained to get the car up and going again,” Patov said. “I haven’t seen that in any other organization, team or anything else that I’ve ever been a part of.”
Even though the Solar Car Team failed to complete either of the qualifying amount of laps, race officials granted the group a provisional qualification for the ASC after they demonstrated their ability to address significant issues with their car in a short amount of time. Two days later, Astrum and the race crew set out to navigate the ASC course.
The event was split into four stages with multiple checkpoints along a route that follows seven of the National Park Service’s National Historic Trails. At specific checkpoints, teams that arrived early also had the option to complete additional loops to increase their car’s total mileage. The team navigated across the country in a three-car caravan, placing the solar car between two “lead” and “chase” vehicles that would help Astrum navigate busy stretches of road, traffic signals and curious bystanders. Benedict said the team had practiced these procedures by creating mock loops through Ann Arbor.
“During the summer, we would go out and drive without the solar car, with some other vehicle in between, and just do practice runs throughout all of Ann Arbor,” Benedict said. “We would go around practicing going through densely populated areas … we went down the main streets of Ann Arbor. We have a list of radio calls that we all have practiced and memorized … I think we just were in such a rhythm that by the competition, it was like second nature.”
The Single Occupant Vehicle class awards placements based on total miles driven. At the end of the race in Wyoming, Astrum had traveled 2,095.5 miles, fending off second place École de Technologie Supérieure’s 2,004.5 miles to take the win.
Goettsch said the ASC took the team through impressive natural scenery and claimed the route helped to brighten the mood despite setbacks during the race.
“That evening was a really bad evening for solar racing,” Goettsch said. “It started to storm right around 6 p.m. when we were supposed to start charging … and as the storm starts to clear up, there’s this double rainbow, the most impressive double rainbow that anyone could possibly imagine … One of the things that ASC loves is their partnership with the National Park Service, and it was amazing to go through this part of the country and see the natural beauty there.”
Rising Engineering sophomore Julia Glasco, the team’s operations director, drove the lead car during the ASC race. She said that the Solar Car Team’s support for its race crew was a reminder that their efforts to fix the car were worth their successful result.
“I was about to get into the (lead) car and then I see there’s seven or eight of our team members that aren’t on race crew that … came all the way to Nashville just to see us,” Glasco said. “It was really such a great moment, because knowing that while we went through all of this stuff and all these hard times, we have a team of 100 to 150 people back in Ann Arbor and the whole school supporting us.”
Summer News Editor Marissa Corsi can be reached at macorsi@umich.edu.
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