Pana Solar Car Challenge Trip

Hello, we are the Pana Solar Car Team from Pana, Illinois! In the past, the Pana High School has participated in the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge, also known as Moonbuggy, but we've decided to take our program to the next level. The Solar Car Challenge engages high school students from all across the nation in S.T.E.M., requiring them to design and engineer an entire vehicle car powered with solar panels. The car will then be taken down to the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth during the summer and raced against other teams. Last year, our team passed a series of checks known as Scrutineering, allowing us to participate in the road race from Fort Worth to Palmdale, California, a near 1,400 mile journey. We placed fifth overall, and received three other trophies, one of which was awarded to the first year team displaying the greatest potential. 

While we far exceeded our expectations for last year, we plan to do even better on the Speedway. Although the track itself is much easier to navigate, the competition is a lot steeper compared to the 2018 challenge. This, along with the very near retirement of our advisor, has made us determined to do even better this year. To do so, we have and are planning to make several changes to our car, including replacing our heavy lead acid batteries with much lighter and more efficient lithium ion batteries, making our car a three-wheeled unit, and overall reducing weight and making the vehicle more aerodynamic.

With these changes, we hope to place high at the race, and allow our teacher to go out with a bang. As the first and currently only high school solar car team in Illinois, we represent our state, and we would love to represent it well. Unfortunately, such an amazing program does require a lot of money put towards it, which is why we appreciate any and all contributions you can make towards the building of our car.  

If you are interested in becoming a full on sponsor of ours, or would just like to know more about who we are and what we do, you can visit our website , or call us at [phone redacted]. Thanks so much for all of your support!