EAST LANSING – Last summer, a group of Michigan State University engineering students built their second solar-powered car. They called it Leonidas, after an ancient Spartan king.
It’s more technologically advanced than its predecessor, built in 2009 and 2010, which they hope will also make it more functional.
For eight years, MSU’s Solar Car Team has struggled to produce a working car as students have joined or graduated. After years of starts and stops, near successes and technical glitches, the team says this car is the one finally ready for an international stage.
They found one this year in the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The team was accepted to show Leonidas during the show’s opening week in an exhibit hall on the lower level of Cobo Center, near other cars built by Michigan college students.
It was the team’s first time showing a car at the Detroit auto show. It’s just the second time Leonidas has been displayed off campus.
“We’ve always wanted to be there. The auto show obviously has a great audience, and people who come value the projects that we work on,” said Ali ElSeddik, 21, an electrical engineering senior and the team’s project manager. “We were pretty excited that we would make it this year.”
MSU’s student-run formula racing team again had an exhibit at the Detroit show this year, its eighth straight appearance, the university said. An auto show spokesman said the university’s history with the show, through the formula racing team, helped open a door for the solar team.
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The Solar Car Team launched in 1999, but it fizzled out along with membership. It regrouped eight years later with a team of engineering students who developed their first solar-powered car, which they called Brasidius.
Leonidas is different. It has a carbon fiber exterior, rather than fiberglass, and an entirely digital system that replaces switches and wires with a microcomputer.
ElSeddik calls Leonidas an electric car powered by solar panels. Instead of charging the battery by plugging into a wall outlet, solar panels provide the power. He said the car has a range of up to 200 miles on a single charge at night or if the solar array is disconnected.
A solar car seems antithetical to an auto show powered in part by high-octane performance cars and trucks. The Lansing-built Cadillac CTS-V, for instance, can go from 0-60 mph in 3.7 seconds. Leonidas can reach top speeds of only 70 mph, ElSeddik said, but that’s not practical for a car powered by the sun.
It’s better suited to speeds of 30 to 40 mph, he said, favoring endurance over speed.
Still, the students’ solar car is innovative at a time when the world’s biggest automakers are producing innovation. Even as domestic auto sales are soaring and gas prices are falling — and as Americans are buying more large pickups and SUVs — car makers are using the high-profile auto show stage to showcase their ideas for alternative fuel.
General Motors Co., for instance, last week unveiled its redesigned Chevrolet Volt hybrid electric car and introduced the Bolt concept — an all-electric car with a 200-mile range that aims to compete head-on with electric car makers such as Silicon Valley’s Tesla Motors.
Dearborn’s Ford Motor Co. sells an all-electric version of its Focus sedan, which has a roughly 100-mile range, along with its Fusion hybrid.
Those products will be increasingly important as automakers work to comply with federal standards that will require them to hit an average fuel economy target of 54.5 mpg by 2025 for U.S. cars and light trucks.
“We’re excited,” ElSeddik said of electric vehicles’ rise. “The advancements within these technologies have significantly grown and upgraded from the previous years.
“As fast as the technology is being upgraded now, and as fast as large companies and corporations like GM and Ford are pushing toward these electric vehicles, the more we’ll see them on the road.”
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Saturn Electronics Corp. donated circuit boards that the students can use in virtually every electronic component in the car — including the power supply to the solar panels, said John Goci, the company’s marketing and business development director.
The Romulus-based maker of printed circuit boards for the automotive, aerospace and health care industries also offered about $750 to cover the students’ travel expenses between East Lansing and Detroit, Goci said. The firm’s vice president is an MSU alumnus.
Back in East Lansing, MSU’s team, which now has about 15 consistent members, is working to fix issues with the brakes, electrical system and the motor that they discovered last summer while trying to qualify for the prestigious American Solar Challenge cross-country race. ElSeddik said students didn’t have enough time between finishing the car and the race to test for problems and couldn’t compete.
The team is still using the same electric motor from its first car. They hope to raise money to buy a new one.
“These projects and these teams, they really give us a real insight into the engineering that we learn,” ElSeddik said. “We try and do our roles by training ourselves and the students on campus to get that first interest and those very first skills to later on go and join these large corporations and apply them toward the real world.”
If you go
The North American International Auto Show in Detroit wraps this weekend at Cobo Center.
Hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. through Saturday, with no entry after 9 p.m., and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, with no entry after 6 p.m.
Tickets are $13 for adults and $7 for seniors and children ages 7-12. Children 6 years old and younger get in free with a parent or guardian.
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MSU students showcase solar car at Detroit auto show
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