The first ever Solar Car at UC Irvine has officially started as a Senior Design Project during the spring of 2017. After careful consideration and a numerous number of interviews, the team leads of the Solar Car project finally put together a full team of twenty undergraduate students. The team ranges from a wide variety of different types of undergraduate engineers. We don’t just have mechanical and aerospace, but have electrical, biomedical, materials science, and computer engineers on our project as well. Having many different engineers helps with the specialization of our three teams: Electrical, Mechanical, and Composition. The Electrical team works to efficiently harness the energy from the sun to power the car during our 1500-2000 mile trek across North America. They work on things like the battery management system, telemetry system, how fast the car accelerates, and user interface. The Mechanical Team works on the design of the chassis, suspension, brakes, steering, and aerodynamic shape. Currently, we are going with a spaceframe chassis, rack and pinion steering, and disc brakes. The Composition Team decides the materials used for the car to ensure lightweight without sacrificing strength. They create the mold of the car and choose materials for things like the chassis, windshield, wheels, and much more. Because we will be working a lot with each other, it is important that we get to know each other really well. To do so, Solar Car had a team BBQ this past weekend. Here is a photo of our full team at the BBQ.