Palo Alto High School students build solar vehicle for national Solar Car Challenge

Watch the team of Paly students put the finishing touches on and test their fully solar-powered vehicle.

A group of Palo Alto High School students is headed to Texas to compete in the biennial Solar Car Challenge, a 925-mile race from Fort Worth, Texas to Palmdale, California starting on July 16.

The Palo Alto Solar Vehicle team has spent the past four months designing and building The Beast, a three-wheel, 100% solar powered vehicle, from scratch. The team will be eligible to compete in the seven-day race if they pass the initial three-day “scrutineering” test in which judges ensure that the vehicle meets the requirements of the challenge and that the driver — a student on the team — is capable of completing the journey.

The team is the only high school team in Northern California to enter the race, which is divided into tiers based on experience. The Palo Alto team is entering the beginner’s Classic Division, in which the vehicle that travels the most miles in the shortest amount of time is the winner.

The Beast features a solar panel roof and a series of batteries that will store power for later use. At an average of 40 miles per hour, though it can achieve higher speeds, the vehicle will last for about six hours of driving per day, team members expect.

Safety is a key concern, as the vehicle will be driving on open roads across four states. The students work backwards from safety, according to parent and team Adviser Rupa Chaturvedi.

“But we then have a lot of freehand to design the way we want to,” she said.

The vehicle will be surrounded by a convoy of regular cars driven by parents and team members, one of which will contain a different judge each day of the race.

Some parents said they were drawn to the project by the hands-on, real world experience their children would gain as team members.

“They’re doing a pretty serious project,” parent Vishwa Rangan said. “It’s the direction that kids need. They have all the energy; they have all the motivation; they have all the talent. It’s just tapping it in.”

Chaturvedi, who is a mechanical engineer, said she founded the Palo Alto Solar Vehicle team in 2022 when she came upon the Solar Car Challenge while looking for extracurricular activities for her daughter, rising junior and team Captain Manasvi Noronha, who is “into cars.” Realizing that they needed to form a team, Chaturvedi sent out messages on Paly parent groups asking for students to apply.

“Within 24 hours we had like 20-plus people signed up already,” Chaturvedi said.

They interviewed the applicants and held an information session, eventually accepting all the students who were still interested by the end of the process. None of them had experience with building cars or operating the machinery that they would be using.

“We signed up for classes (and) we taught the students everything from scratch,” Chaturvedi said.

The students learned to weld, a skill they used extensively when making The Beast’s steel frame.

“We had lofty plans of making this curvaceous, aerodynamic, gorgeous thing. And then we learned to weld and we realized … this thing is going to be a box,” Build Lead Alice Jambon, who is a rising junior, said. “It didn’t really look like a car until we actually set it down on its three wheels.

Benjamen Gao, the current team lead for the Stanford Solar Car Project, emphasized the amount of knowledge required to build even the most basic solar car.

“Just to make sure that the battery, for example, can communicate with the computer that talks to the motors and talks to the solar panels. … For really any team with any kind of engineering capacity, that’s a tremendous challenge,” Gao said.

‘We had lofty plans of making this curvaceous, aerodynamic, gorgeous thing. And then we learned to weld and we realized … this thing is going to be a box.’

Alice Jambon, build lead, Palo Alto Solar Vehicle

Each student’s family was expected to contribute $2,000 to the team as an annual enrollment fee. Individuals and companies like CloudPaths have also made donations to the $50,000 project. Funds have gone toward supplies, transportation and access to Maker Nexus, a makerspace in Sunnyvale. This summer, the students have been spending an average of five to six hours a day, six days a week working in the space, one parent said.

The Beast will be disassembled and driven to Dallas, while 12 team members, including parent chaperones, travel there by plane to accompany the vehicle on its journey back across half the country. The group is seeking additional funds for their trip via GoFundMe. Applications to join the team for the 2024 season are open.

Visual Journalist Magali Gauthier contributed to this report.

Visual Journalist Magali Gauthier contributed to this report.

Visual Journalist Magali Gauthier contributed to this report.

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