A team of 15 students from Palo Alto High School built a solar-powered vehicle and are getting ready to put it to the test. Emma Goss reports.
A team of 15 students from Palo Alto High School built a solar-powered vehicle and are getting ready to put it to the test.
They are headed to Texas, where they will compete against teams across the country next week. Three students will take turns driving their car, called the "Beast" several hundred miles from Fort Worth, Texas to the Southern California community of Palmdale.
15-year-old Manasvi Noronha, a sophomore who loves cars, found the solar vehicle competition online with help from her mom, Rupa Chaturvedi.
"...and realized that there's no team here," said Chaturvedi, who also serves as the program director. "And we should start one."
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
They got a team of eager student’s together last Fall.
"We just made a Google form," said Noronha. "And we posted it on every single parent forum we could find, and a bunch of parents forced their kids to join."
Most teams in the competition have at least 20 people, if not more. With just 15 students, the team managed to build the "Beast" in four months, a record time.
Over those months, they learned welding, woodworking, and all steps involved in getting their vision ready for competition. Now the team has registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit and are fundraising for extra parts for the competition.
“Well at first, the only reason I liked them was because they're shiny and super cool. And then, getting more involved in his project has made me realize what it actually takes to build a car and pursue a career in automotive engineering, which is what I hope to do," Noronha said.
The team flies to Dallas on Monday, and they will hit the road with the Beast a week from Sunday.
"Once we get back, maybe take a week break, and then straight on to building the next car," Noronha added.
Applications for the team are open, with the hope of recruiting an equal number of boys and girls.
"We would like more and more students, especially underrepresented communities, to be able to get exposure to something like this," said Chaturvedi.
The vehicle can go up to 77 miles per hour. The challenge is not a race but a test of which car can drive the greatest distance in the shortest amount of time.
