Our Cars
6 Years, 4 Cars, 5 National Championships
The Mean Green Driving Machine
The Mean Green Driving Machine was the first car our team built. Built to race in the Advanced Division, it completed 659 laps (988.5 miles) over the four day race, winning our first National Championship. This car set the standard for our future cars, along with many of the engineering practices to build them.
La Cucaracha/Jimmy
Coming back together after Covid-19, the team decided to build a new car. Jimmy was this second car we built. It was designed to be lighter, more reliable, and more aerodynamically sound than our first car. This car raced twice, first during 2021, then during 2022, earning 649 laps (973 miles) and 876 (1314 miles) respectively. These totals earned us the championship both years.
Sockeye
Sockeye was our third car. Designed with the main goal of aerodynamics and efficiency in mind, it was eligible to race in both the Collegiate World Solar Car Challenge along with the The Solar Car Challenge (High School). With construction beginning in 2022, it was our first fully composite car. The aeroshell and frame were both made of carbon fiber. Completed in 2024, it raced during the 2024 Solar Car Challenge and won with 778 laps (1170 miles), despite having half of the available solar panel area. After the race, Sockeye was transferred to the University of Washington.
Ember
Ember is our most recent car, designed to maximize solar panel surface area while maintaining the same low drag as Sockeye. Due to the new design, Ember has 57% more solar cells than Sockeye with similar aerodynamic efficiency, and is capable of doing well over 1000 laps (1,500 miles). It also introduces several major philosophy changes, as the car was built in only four months, to include foam and fiberglass fairings instead of carbon fiber molded aeroshell, as well as a three-wheel configuration instead of four. What Ember shares with Sockeye however, is a first-place victory. With a total of 875 laps (1,312.5 miles), it finished just one lap short of breaking the record previously set by Jimmy, although Ember never reached true optimal racing speeds during the SCC25 event due to a track speed limit and issues that came with a lack of available testing time prior to the race.