Solar-powered vehicle competition visits St. Joseph
By Ashley Luthans
Collegiate competitors from across the world stopped in St. Joseph on Tuesday as a part of the Electrek American Solar Challenge.
The challenge is a biannual competition in which collegiate teams design, build and drive solar-powered vehicles across the United States, stopping at several national historic landmarks.
The competition lasts for eight days and vehicles travel over 1,500 miles on national historic trails, starting in Nashville, Tennessee, and ending in Casper, Wyoming.
The 11 teams competing arrived at the Pony Express Museum between 11:45 a.m. and 6 p.m. and spoke to St. Joseph residents who came out to see the vehicles.
Alexandre Chevalier has been a member of Purdue University’s solar racing team for the past two years. Chevalier said this experience has been very rewarding and he has met a lot of kind people.
“The competition’s been great,” Chevalier said. “We’re very proud of being a solar racing team. The community’s great, they’re all here to help you out. We had this track event first called the Formula Sun Grand Prix where teams go in to qualify for this American Solar Challenge. So, over there you have all the teams lined up in pits and garages working on their cars. So whenever you have issues, challenges or even questions, you can really go up to them and everyone’s very open and they’re sharing all the information, all their knowledge from those 20, 30 years of experience that we obviously don’t have yet.”
Chevalier explained that Purdue’s team is happy with what they have accomplished in the past year by designing and building their vehicle.
“We decided to step it up and come to this competition, the American Solar Challenge,” Chevalier said. “And within a year, we were able to design and build a car that’s obviously pretty competitive right now, so we’re very proud of that. Seeing the car drive around 50 miles an hour on those country roads is an awesome, awesome sight to see.”
The solar-powered vehicles will leave the Pony Express Museum on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. to head to Beatrice, Nebraska.
More information about the competition can be found at americansolarchallenge.org.
