All around the streets of Hanover, students have looked down to knee level to find members of the Dartmouth Solar Racing Team encased in sleek-bodied vehicles.
Although it may seem like joy-riding, the team is preparing for the upcoming fifth annual American Tour de Sol, a seven-day solar and electrical car race, which will pass through Hanover next week.
The team plans to enter two cars: the electric Equivox and the solar-powered Sun Vox IV. Dartmouth has raced in the Tour de Sol each of the last five years and took fourth and fifth places last year.
The race is scheduled to begin in Boston on May 23 and ends in Burlington, Vt. May 29, stopping on the Dartmouth Green at noon on May 27.
A total of 40 cars are signed up to participate in the race, including entries from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Vermont, the University of Massachusetts, and Convell, a New Hampshire high school.
The Dartmouth Solar team is composed of approximately 16 students, most of whom are either undergraduates or graduate students at the Thayer School of Engineering.
"We think our team stands out because it is almost entirely student-run," said Solar Team President Laura Iwan '93. "Other schools might only use students to drive with professors doing most of the design and maintenance, but here we do almost everything."
The Solar Team's faculty advisor, Doug Fraser, said he tries to let students guide the team by limiting his authority.
Matthias Johnsen '93, the Solar Team's technical director, said Dartmouth's technology is more advanced than that of the other teams in the race. "We're also one of the most technological teams in the United States," he said. "I don't know of any other team that has an on-board computer."
Over the past year, the Dartmouth team has won three races: the Pikes Peak, Canadian Solar Cup and the Florida Sunday Challenge.
"We're an extremely active team; most teams only enter one race a year," Johnsen said.
While most teams specify one designated driver, the Dartmouth team will have eight, allowing a larger part of the group a chance to be in control of the car.
According to Johnsen, the key to winning the race is more than speed. "The main thing is energy-efficiency and driving smart," he said. "But it's also a matter of luck."
Fraser said, "We definitely stand a really good chance to win. Last year we suffered only from a silly mechanical failure," Fraser said.
The cars, each of which costs about $10,000 to build, are paid for by sponsors such as the Ford Motor Co. and Wheels, Inc., a car leasing agency in the Chicago area.
The Tour de Sol began in Europe in 1985 and was initiated in the United States in 1989 by Fraser and Rob Wills, a Thayer School graduate.
