Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Solar and Automotive Student Innovation

Come join past and current team members for the first showing of the documentary, "Stanford Solar Project Racing on Sunshine," commemorating the 25th year anniversary of the Stanford's Solar Car Project (SSCP). This film features the team's top-five finish in the 2013 World Solar Challenge in the Australian outback, as well as interviews with project supporters, including JB Straubel, CTO of Tesla Motors, and representatives from Google, Panasonic and other tech companies.

This film is produced by Mark Shwartz or the Precourt Institute for Energy.

After the showing and Q&A please join us for the Precourt Energy Social from 5:15-6:30pm, right outside the auditorium. This social is open to Stanford students, faculty, and staff.

In 2013, SSCP achieved the title of America's top solar car team and best undergraduate team in the world. The project began in 1989 as an entirely student-run, non-profit organization fueled by its members' passion for environmentally-minded technology. The team designs, builds, tests, and races solar-powered vehicles as part of a global initiative called the World Solar Challenge, a 2000-mile solar trek across the Australian Outback. As an academic effort, the project provides a unique opportunity for Stanford students to gain valuable hands-on engineering and business experience in raising community awareness of the power of solar energy and the increasing need for lighter, more aerodynamic, and more efficient vehicles. The team operates on a two-year project cycle that becomes more than another extracurricular activity. Students on the team balance their involvement with work and academics, but always remain dedicated to the collective effort of building from the conceptual to the racing phase one of the world' most efficient vehicles.

Members usually join SSCP as undergraduates with little to no engineering background and gradually build their knowledge while working on a vehicle. Coordinating a project of this magnitude also requires considerable management and planning, allowing students to develop these vital business skills in an engineering environment. With this approach, the team has fostered nine generations of award-winning vehicles, proving that a hands-on education in creative design and execution produces impressive results.