MIT's latest solar race car might look like a funky Ikea table with a hump, but don't laugh. It'll do 90 mph and is packed with technology that may end up in the hybrids and EVs the rest of us will soon be driving.
The university's Solar Electric Vehicle Team, the oldest such team in the country, unveiled the $243,000 carbon-fiber racer dubbed Eleanor on Friday and is shaking the car down to prepare for its inaugural race later this year.
"It drives beautifully," said George Hansel, a freshman physics major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the team. "It's fun to drive and quite a spectacle."
Eleanor is slated to compete in the tenth World Solar Challenge, a seven-day race across nearly 2,000 miles of Australian outback.
Vehicles competing in the endurance race may look hopelessly impractical, but the competition is a test bed for batteries, motor technology and power-management systems that may eventually appear in hybrids and electric vehicles. Like Formula 1 and other big-budget motor sports, the solar challenge helps develop some of the vehicles we see in showrooms.
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