About

A solar car runs on a fixed budget: whatever sunlight lands on its panels. No team gets more of it than any other. What separates the field is how much each team can do with it, and that comes down to efficiency: how cleanly the car moves through the air, how little it weighs, and how little energy it loses between the sun and the road.

That is the problem we work on, car after car. Every design decision gets tested against physics and then against hundreds of miles of open road, and the results are public. We measure ourselves by how we perform when it counts, and we keep finding more efficiency to make the next car faster and go further on the same sunlight.

Washington Solar Car was founded in 2023, when few people were willing to back an unproven idea. It took its first car, Sockeye, from the start of design to the starting line in eleven months, less than half the two years most teams take, and earned Rookie of the Year. The following year, in its first cross-country endurance race, it finished as the #1 American team in the Single-Occupant Vehicle class. When the car needed a trailer to cross the country, or funding fell short, our community stepped up every time. That support is the real strength behind everything this team has achieved.