Society of Alternative Energy Racing

After decades of North American collegiate solar car racing, there are a lot of alumni. That means there are so many great stories of both everyone’s racing experience, but also how that experience influenced the personal and professional lives of the participants.

Today, is the first entry in what I expect to be a long running series of episodes: solar car alum interviews.

First up: Natalie Vartabedian, former driver and battery protection/management system designer for the Michigan State University solar car team.

Enjoy my interview with Will, who is definitely a solar car dude in like 3 to 4 different ways. Hear about his Cannonball Sun idea, which sprang from the frustrations of the lack of racing events during the pandemic. I wrote a little intro to make a few non-solar-car historical connections.

This episode is going to most definitely tie-in with the 2 main threads of competitive solar car racing, since they were both launched by solo attempts: Hans Tholstrup (et al.) in the Quiet Achiever around the whole of Australia, which led to the World Solar Challenge, and the Crowder College Solar Car Team and their TSAR project which took them across the US and indirectly led to the GM Sunrayce USA.

Also, I will likely come back to Will and his crew as part of a series of interviews with solar car alum to hear about their racing history, and how that experience shaped and aided their professional lives.

See the Cannonball Sun crew’s website at thecannonballsun.com and you can catch them on Insta (@thecannonballsun).

Episode 2 is finally here! I spoke with Joseph S. from the Georgia Tech solar racing team in the summer of 2025, right before the American Solar Challenge track race.

Make sure to stayed tuned after the credits for special ending music!

Yay! Finally ready with Episode 1. Listen to interviews with the solar car teams from the University of British Columbia, Western Michigan University, Iowa State University and the University of Minnesota. Thanks to the members of those teams for giving up the time on a busy day to chat with me.

A quick outline / mission statement