Going Far After Racing a Solar Car

Last October, Michigan Engineering's solar car team raced its 17th solar car, Astrum, across the Australian Outback. It was part of the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. Watch this video to see how the team finished in fourth place despite starting dead last and how the skills gained can translate to multiple years of real world, industry experience.

“Placing fourth in the world is fantastic,” said Will Jones  , the team’s race manager and a senior in mechanical engineering. “This team worked so hard and it’s so validating to finish where we did.”

Transcript

00:00:05 [Music] there's something very special about a group of people who are brought together not to make money for a living but by a shared passion for engineering and to try and build something truly world class you really do pour everything you have into these cars for months on end coming into college if you example told me hey go design a battery pack I'd have

00:00:34 no idea where to start um hey go design a solar car i' I'd also have no idea where to start good good but I learned a lot about how to approach real world engineering problems you need to have a lot of people work together exceptionally well to make a car that's going to get across a desert uh like one the world solar challenge you ready knew it was going to be hard it's never

00:01:03 going to be what you expect no matter where you finish no matter who you are there's always going to be something unexpected that pops [Music] up yeah so looks like we had some electrical issues uh the car turned off and we tried to switch between our coils uh so we're kind of looking to see if maybe there is some kind of short in the

00:01:27 circuitry um doing a lot of checks right now uh considering all the different options for how to continue so the hot lap for us was definitely really disappointing uh especially as an electrical team getting out there doing a bunch of testing the day before really put us in a position where we were super excited to see where Ethan would be able to place and so when

00:01:48 halfway around the track he radiated back the car is not turning on we were like oh no as soon as he started slowing down around maybe turn S or 8 um I I knew that something was wrong and I knew that either we would wouldn't get as good of a time as we wanted or or we wouldn't finish and

00:02:13 unfortunately um we didn't finish we sort of Limp the car in we took it into the garage started inspecting everything and realized we'd blown fuse so that really I think put us in in a really really bad spot to start off the race like you know you never want to be last I think after the hot lap the team sort of came

00:02:37 together we all knew that the car was very capable we all knew that the first day would be pretty chaotic hey Baker no matter what kick [Music] [Music] we've pass 10 Cruiser cars we my Tally was 23 total cars total cars it was these are students that have experiences that are similar to the

00:03:27 experiences that you know a new career engine would have in terms of a distributed team they own a small part of a much larger project our philosophy at the University of Michigan um is to make these organizations as independent as possible so we provide them with support and other things that come with the University's identity and our

00:03:49 sponsorship of of a lot of these organizations but beyond that the students are free to manage the organization as they like I need to drive another 350 km the solar car it's an opportunity to experience industry before industry there's a budget there's a number of people there's an organizational structure there is no ideal solution it's not just

00:04:17 a problem sitting on a board that only has one answer you could do the best thing you could do the cheapest thing you could do the most robust thing and so figuring out the optimization of those problems and then how do you work with the rest of the team and then commit money that you've raised as well as talk to sponsors that have given you money it's kind of like a mini startup

00:04:36 incubator but the the most important quality is uh the resilience that students build as part of these teams because they do have setbacks it's all about them being able to sit down and collect their thoughts and just you know let's take what what you learned in the curriculum let's analyze the problem that's very important cuz it you know giving up is not an option here

00:05:01 right I'd say time on uh project teams is pretty much equivalent to time in Industry um so if I see a student who has 3 or four years of project experience I consider that two to three years of Industry experience that lets me know that they know how to work together they know how to achieve on Deadline and they know how to kind of recover if something goes

00:05:23 ay I don't think there was ever a point where I thought that we were out of it yeah I hear it Knocking I knew that we had a good car I knew the car was capable of of making many many passes but Jason blue are ready for a pass whenever traffic is clear I think when we passed solagen that was the moment in which I realized that we were we actually had a

00:05:48 shot at the podium just one step at a time run our race and like we're in it for the world championship guys go 1 three 1 2 3 go I I think our Spirits were all higher than they've ever been as a team and I I think that felt really good where we knew that even if we didn't make Podium that we had really shown that we deserve to be here despite starting and last and

00:06:24 we were all really proud of what we were able to do as a team with our car [Music] well I'm incredibly excited to be here uh it's the end of a very long journey um and it's just been full of triumphs and setbacks and uh growth and honestly I couldn't be happier everyone's uh Spirits are super high uh we gave it our all we didn't bring home first place but

00:06:52 um I don't think any of us regret anything from the race so in our over 30e history technically as a team we have to succeed at being the best but regardless of that I I think the process of attempting to get there teaches you so much about yourself and about sort of what it means to be an engineer in that context that you can really take forward into the rest of

00:07:15 your life and use it to improve everything you do I've found where my limits are I've grown so much as a person so much as an engineer I think it's truly invaluable and I'm so thankful that I that I did this and so thankful that know I I kept pushing that really at the end of it is what it's all about right we're not

00:07:39 about cars and planes and boats and trains here we're about the students and the experiences they have what they take away from that you think you're making a product that is the car except at the end of the day you're truly making a group of Engineers and a group of business professionals and team leaders who are able to execute on a project given a demand

00:08:01 there are so many lessons here in how to do your job as an engineer how to do your job as a teammate how to do your job as a human being you guys got this that I think you really can't teach in the classroom to me there's no question that Sol car is the best thing I have ever done in my life and I don't know if that will ever change [Music]