While solar powered vehicles have not yet found widespread popularity like their electric counterparts, the students are optimistic about the potential for a car with panels across the roof or on the hood to charge itself while it’s out in the sun. Like EVs, solar cars use lithium ion batteries, but the ISU vehicle is stripped of luxuries like air conditioning in order to promote maximum efficiency. Although cost is still a major concern, a study from the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) predicted that EVs equipped with solar panels could comprise up to 10 percent of the commercial market by 2030.

Jablonski, now a junior, joined the team as a freshman and now serves as the systems director for the project.

“I do a lot of the directing in terms of technical things, so working with the electrical and mechanical teams, coordinating everything and making sure that everyone’s talking to each other,” he said.

Another member of the team, Bryce Rega from Excelsior, Minn., said he’s been focusing on the software side of things, including cruise control and telemetry projects and explained why the potential of a solar vehicle excites him so much.

Bryce Rega of the Solar Car team shows Mark Mack of Marshalltown the driver’s seat and steering wheel of the vehicle on Tuesday morning.

“An electric vehicle just runs off of the pack that they have, but a solar vehicle uses the power of the sun. So while you’re out there driving in the sun, you can capture some of that energy and get some more range out of your car,” Rega said. “Just like a regular electric vehicle, it has a battery pack. The difference is that it gets to charge while it’s driving.”

He added that while the long-term goal, at least on the consumer side, might not be to make an entirely solar-powered car, adding panels to the hood or roof of an electric vehicle could still improve the range greatly and help drivers go farther without having to stop for a charge.

One of the members of the public who showed up for the demonstration Tuesday was actually an alumni of the program itself. Scott Kilborn worked on the second version of the solar car (PrISUm is now on its 15th) all the way back in 1993, and he was fascinated to see how much it’s changed since then.

“It’s neat to see people still using it as a way to learn and advance technology and things like that,” Kilborn said. “The battery technology has gotten easier. The ability to 3-D print parts would make it infinitely easier. I see the safety of the car and the rules around that. We had an aluminum frame. We had no roll cage. We had no helmets, kind of a little bit of a seatbelt, but that’s about it.”

Kilborn also hopes that receiving this training and experience in college could prepare the students for jobs in an ever-evolving automotive industry.

“I think (it provides) the ability for students to learn and transition into a lot of the new electric and hybrid vehicle trains and the more efficient vehicles as far as rolling resistance, wind resistance and things like that, and be able to transition right from college directly into working for an automotive company — engineering, design, power train and the battery technology, everything like that,” he said.

Once the students were wrapped up at the library, they rolled on to additional stops at Emerson and MARSHALLTOWN Co. before heading to Cedar Rapids to visit Collins Aerospace on Wednesday. Along with building, modifying and improving the vehicle, the team also competes in an annual road race that covers 1,500 to 2,000 miles within the U.S. along with other events that pit them against students from other universities around the country. To learn more about the project, visit https://www.prisum.org/.

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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.