University of Minnesota student-led solar vehicle team races ‘down under’ in Bridgestone World Solar Challenge

The University of Minnesota student-led Solar Vehicle Project team will compete in the 2025 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge starting Aug. 24 in Darwin, Australia. Teams will then race approximately 1,900 miles south to Adelaide where the competition will end on Aug. 29. The University of Minnesota is one of just three teams from the United States competing this year.

In October 2023, the team won second place in the Cruiser Class in the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge with their car, “Gaia,” matching the best performance by any U.S. team in the international competition’s history. In July 2022, the team took first place in the Multi-Occupant Vehicle Class at the American Solar Challenge.

The team is hoping that recent internal improvements made to Gaia will help them succeed again this year.

“The array is all new. Battery regulations have changed, so we have a smaller battery than we did last time,” says Ella Seboe, a mechanical engineering major and the group’s director of engineering. “The motors on this car are also different from last time, where pretty much everything is electrical.”

Cruiser Class cars are designed with an emphasis placed on real-world practicality. The hope is that a design could someday be translated into use for everyday transportation.

The team’s goal for this iteration of Gaia is to resemble a production vehicle as much as possible, given the competition rules. This means that there are plenty of everyday comforts inside Gaia, including Apple’s CarPlay for when the driver wants to listen to music on the road in Australia.

An education that travels

The team is unique in that they have an education-aligned mission, meaning every component on Gaia is student designed, manufactured, and tested.

“Figuring out how to navigate this level of complexity in an organization has been really informative,” says Henry Kopp, a mechanical engineering major and the team's head of operations. “I'm going to go into the workforce when I graduate with skills that take a lot of people a decade to learn after they graduate.”

The University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project is also one of only a few teams in the world to design and build their own motors.

“I think the real draw is being able to hold a piece of engineering that I designed and built as a college student that I’m really proud of,” says Josh Langan, a computer engineering student and the team’s new-member coordinator.

Continuing a tradition of racing success—and support

The University of Minnesota's Solar Vehicle Project was founded in 1990 and has since completed 15 cars. The Solar Vehicle Project has competed in more than 30 racing events, placing first or second in their class in 15 of those.

The team is supported by dozens of individual and corporate sponsors, including platinum sponsors Clifford I. and Nancy C. Anderson, Robert K. Eddy, Altair, Altium, Ansys, Siemens and Thermo King.

This story is adapted from the College of Science and Engineering