35: University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project
About The Team
How many times has your team participated in the event?
The University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project has participated in WSC six times before, racing a single occupant vehicle in 1999, then returning as one of the inaugural Cruiser Class teams in 2013. We have raced a Cruiser Class vehicle in every event since, most recently taking 2nd in 2023.
What is the design philosophy behind your solar car?
Our design philosophy emphasizes building a highly reliable vehicle with the most practical design possible, embracing the core mission of the Cruiser Class of vehicles. We believe in making incremental changes to improve our design, as such this will be our second time racing this shell at BWSC with many of the internal components having been significantly upgraded from 2023. Our goal to make a practical vehicle leads us to design our car look and feel as much like a production vehicle as possible, with features like Apple Carplay implemented alongside key racing innovations like our state-of-the-art motor design.
What is unique about your solar car?
SVP’s core mission is first and foremost to educate the next generation of engineers and leaders, which leads us to maximize student involvement in the design and manufacturing of every single component of our vehicle. Because of this, we are one of the few teams in the world to design and build our own motors and one of the few teams to not bring any faculty members with us on race. Our vehicle is also unique for being the only Cruiser Class vehicle designed to compete in both BWSC and the American Solar Challenge.
Why does youre team value participating in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge?
Participating in BWSC gives our team the ability to not only compete with other American teams, but challenge ourselves to compete against the best teams in the world. Maintaining the distinction as one of the few American teams to participate in BWSC and ASC also challenges us as an organisation to rise to a higher level to be able to raise the appropriate funds and organise the logistics to transport our vehicle, equipment, and 20 team members from the USA to Australia every two years.
What is the one thing your team is looking forward to when you visit Australia?
We are looking forward to once again having the opportunity to meet and compete with the top teams in the world, sharing our common passion for solar racing. We also look forward to seeing the country, with this being the first time in Australia for almost all of our race-crew.