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Stanford University. [sound] The reason why solar car racing exists is because of
this race in Australia called The World Solar Challenge and the objective is to
build a car that can cross the Australian outback as fast as possible. U.S hasn't
won the race since 1989 so we'd like to bring the big trophy back to the U.S.
[sound] >> Stanford solar car project is almost entirely undergraduate >> I would
go [inaudible] >> It's all run by students from the logistics to the business to the
design. >> Is he still driving? >> If we had to build the car using our own funds,
using cash, the car would be about $450,000 to $500,000. But fortunately we
have a lot of great sponsors. >> There are a lot of things that you can learn
actually building a car that you can't learn in classes. If you do have your
technology right and you make things efficient enough you can actually get a
car to go 60 miles an hour on just sunlight. That's what we do here. We make
cars that can go that fast highway speeds on the power it takes to run a toaster. >>
Our top speed is probably around 70. You can't see the front of your car. You just
know that it's way out in front of you and if you hit things you've just damaged a
half million dollar car. So that's a bit nerve racking. [laugh] It's something that
very few people get to do as undergrads. This isn't a class. This is code that I
write that will do something, and if we do this right, we win a race that American
cars haven't won in for twenty years. >>For more, please visit us at