THE TEAM
While Illini Solar Car started as a handful of UIUC engineering students in 2014, it takes more than that to create a solar car. Today we have grown into a much larger operation harnessing the skills of over 100 students from prestigious departments across the University.
200+
Members
20+
Majors
3
Cars
1
Goal
Meet the Sub Teams
Business & Marketing
Solar cars are not inexpensive. We operate much like a small business. The business and marketing team handles almost all non-engineering tasks to deliver our product: the budget, branding, social media, promotional media creation, publicity and outreach events, and much more. Perhaps most important is their role in building relationships with our sponsors. Creating a solar car relies on significant support from donors and sponsors.
Electrical
The electric system on a solar-electric vehicle is the heart of what makes the car operate. An electric car requires a reliable electrical system, from the overarching power system of the motors, custom built battery, and solar array, down to the snippets of code that flash the blinkers. Our electrical team designs the system to work especially for solar racing. Nearly every board is designed from scratch and runs custom code. Together this creates a fully functioning street legal vehicle that can reliably drive across continents. Students on this team can also get the unique hands-on experience of working with highly-efficient solar cells. The team experiments with materials and manufacturing methods to create high performance solar arrays that maximize the power obtained from the sun. They work on the design, sourcing, installation, and wiring for the arrays that make our electric cars into solar cars!
Mechanical
It's very important for a car not to fall apart! That's why we trust our mechanical team with the systems required to enable safe movement of the car. Our mechanical team designs and builds the entire structure of our cars, including the carbon fiber chassis and the aluminum suspension. To ensure the structure is strong, the mechanical team runs FEA and real tests on the composites. We also need to create a great aerodynamic design for our car. We iterate on models of the cars to ensure that they perform efficiently. With the support of several sponsors, they run countless airflow simulations to evaluate the performance of designs and make improvements.
Strategy & Telemetry
An often overlooked aspect of a car team is the race. During the multi-day 3000km solar car races, in order to win, it is critical that our cars operate to their greatest potential. This means optimizing efficiency by monitoring the cars performance and using models to make informed decisions. To do this, the group must develop various computational tools including an application to wirelessly receive and display live data along with analysis and simulation tools to better understand how the car performs.
TEAM CORE
Meet our team leads!
