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I've been competing in this sport for 5 years now with the NDSU Sunsetters Solar Racing Team. Our car (first place, stock class last year) can do about 25-30mph on solar power alone. We also have batteries on board to get up hills, drive through clouds, etc. We have had it up to about 70mph on the interstate (yes, it is street legal!).

Here's some links:

Our team - Sunsetters
American Solar Challenge - ASC
Formula Sun - formula sun
The other teams - teams

Check out North Dakota State, home of North Dakota's premier solar racing team. Racing in the stock class this year, we beat Berkeley (another stock class team) and Stanford (open class).

With a fairly small campus ~10k students, and cheap tuition, it's not too bad. Also, all of the classes are taught by professors instead of grad students, which is a good thing.

I'm not going to waste any more of my time with you here, because you're obviously mistaken, but too proud to admit it. Which is unfortunate.
I will say this, though:

In the desert, there are no clouds 99% of the time, which means it IS always sunny.
A) The race went from Chicago to Claremont, CA. Most of that is not desert.
B) The second day was cloudy. Good luck raycing under your conditions of "few or no batteries at all."

It seems I'm one of the few that sees through that misconception.
Yes, you're right. It's amazing that a script kiddie like you can see the pointlessness in all of this while the folks at MIT, Michigan, Stanford, A&M, Berkeley, and Yale choose to foolishly continue. I think you should give them all a call and share your wisdom.

If you're desinging hovercars, you don't design one that will only work in perfect labratory conditions... That simply wastes time and money of developers that they could be using to make something that would work.
Once again. You ARE right. Henceforth, whenever engineers make something new, they should just skip the lab part and go straight to building third generation prototypes--just think of all the time and money saved not having to learn from generation one and two. Heck, why not save some REAL time and just skip the entire R&D phase in favor of going straight to mass production... What time savings there will be! I think you should make some calls to Ford, Chevy, and Honda, too--they'd be interested in this plan you have.

The technology in Indy cars certainly does not benefit consumer cars in any way. When was the last time you saw a car that went over 200MPH, had a roll cage, etc.
Call Goodyear and ask them why they're interested in Nascar. They'll have lots more to say besides that it's good advertising. But I suppose you're going to tell me that tires are also an "already developed, mature technology," so Goodyear should kill it's R&D department, too, because tires are perfect already. By the way, tell that to Bridgestone/Firestone, too, I'm sure they'd like to know that the recall last year wasn't their fault because that's as good as tires get.

Ciao.

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The race was to be held in the middle of the mojave desert, which means no shade to be found, and the entire race held during the dylight hours. In other words, the conditions in which they race would encourage the building of a system with few or no batteries at all. Again, encouraging the design of systems that could never become actual products.

On the contrary, each car has a battery pack that's needed to power the vehicle. Ours had eight. And just because it's during daylight hours doesn't mean there's always sun.

Furthermore, going "as far [as] a requestion [of] the requirements for entry" includes going to a website. You want a cookie for that? If that's going far, then I highly doubt you'd've gone any farther to tackle design, fundraising, and actually building something as complex as a solar car.

Finally, I don't suppose it occurred to you that the designs the teams come up with, while sometimes not directly able to "become actual products", are in fact advancing solar car design. You're probably not going to find a lot of Indy 500 design go straight to your Chevy Malibu, but you can bet that a lot of the technology gets shifted in that direction. Above all, there's more to life than coming up with a product. Building teamwork among the members, gaining experience in your field of study, raising awareness of the possibilities of solar power, and a downright good time seem like pretty good reasons as well to get involved.

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The Sunsetters from NDSU kept daily updates with pictures that were really interesting.

Congrats to the #1 rookie team!

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The Sunsetters from NDSU kept daily updates with pictures that were really interesting.

Congrats to the #1 rookie team!

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The Sunsetters from NDSU kept daily updates with pictures that were really interesting.

Congrats to the #1 rookie team!

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