LANSING – On a cool and cloudy summer day, Michigan high school students recently drove the car they’d been engineering for months around the block and parked it in front of the state Capitol.
The three-wheeled, sharply angled, gray, white and black camo-print car seats two people and is powered by solar-charged batteries.
Lansing was their first stop on their three-and-a-half-day long road trip after they left from Detroit. Their trip also stopped in Saginaw, Flint and Traverse City before reaching their final destination at Michigan Tech University in the Upper Peninsula.
Detroit resident Alyssa Lewis of Renaissance High School is heading into her senior year of high school. She said she got involved with building the solar car over two years ago during her freshman year. She worked as a project manager and also did engineering work on the car.
“I feel very achieved,” Lewis said. “I think this is something that’s very important to me because I can come in, share my ideas, make new friends and just collaborate on this awesome project.”
“The car took over five years to complete, from drafting designs to actually building the car”, she said.
The team of students from the Detroit and Flint areas belongs to the Heroes’ Alliance organization, which aims to provide students with additional educational opportunities, and foster and encourage academic growth.
Lewis said her time working on the project helped her develop helpful skills in addition to engineering.
“I might go into engineering, but even if I don’t go into engineering, I still learned a lot of other skills like time management, and public speaking,” she said.
This story was reported as part of a partnership among Capital News Service, WKAR Radio and Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.
