UCI Solar Car Team Wins Award at National Competition

July 23, 2025 - The UC Irvine Solar Car team won the Capacitance Award at the 2025 Formula Sun Grand Prix as they raced the SolEater, UCI’s first student-engineered solar car to enter this national competition. The contest is an annual track competition held on grand prix style courses for student teams from around the world.  The Capacitance Award recognizes the team showing the highest levels of adaptability with its electrical systems and asking the most insightful questions.  

The students are required to design a car that runs on solar power. "Our car is shaped like a teardrop. When rain falls, it takes that shape because it's the most aerodynamically efficient, falling to the ground as fast as it can just with the force of gravity,” said chief mechanical officer Sage Singh who just graduated with a mechanical engineering degree.  “So we did that too, taking inspiration from nature to make our car glide through the wind."

The SolEater’s shell is made of fiberglass and Divinycell sandwich panels, with lightweight carbon fiber honeycomb on its underside as structural reinforcement. The shell weighs only 100 pounds while the car weighs in at about 600 pounds. The car can charge itself while driving, allowing it to theoretically run indefinitely at speeds up to 30 mph.

Thirty-three teams competed in the annual six-day event which saw technical screenings for the first three days. Seventeen teams passed those tests to make it to track racing. The UCI team encountered last-minute issues with their motor controller and battery management system, which prevented them from racing on the track. But they fixed all the systems in time to successfully pass all the screening stations and get the car running through the dynamic courses by the last day.

The Capacitance Award honored them for their ability to solve problems. “We were able to think on the fly a lot and engineer on the spot and work with the advisers and be very flexible to get our electrical systems working,” said the team’s electrical lead Bryce Wolf who just graduated with a degree in electrical engineering.

Wolf said his team enjoyed learning everything from ground zero. “When the design cycle for our car first began, none of us knew how to design any of the things that we ended up engineering successfully. It's been super fun being able to design and protect a high voltage battery system,” said Wolf. “We’re all super close and became much better engineers because of it. I learned a million new things going through the competition.”

Building a solar car from scratch was a priceless learning experience for the team. “I started out barely knowing how to put a nut and bolt together, and for the past three years, I’ve been applying the theories we learned in class to design and manufacture something that’s never been made before,” said Singh. “This team made me realize how thrilling automotive development is. I want to work for Formula One, Le Mans, or GT3 — honestly anything really fast.” 

The team’s project manager David Chen said he is grateful to their sponsors, advisors, the UCI School of Engineering, and peer teams for their support. “Most teams are friendly, lending tools and parts from each other to get cars going,” said Wolf. “Everyone’s trying to help people succeed. It was awesome.”

- Natalie Tso