On 19 July, dozens of teams of American high school students set off on a five-day, 630-mile road race from Fort Worth to Fort Stockton, Texas, driving cars they built themselves that run solely on solar power. The Solar Car Challenge, marking its 30th anniversary this year, tasks students with designing and constructing their own vehicles using off-the-shelf and 3D-printed parts, with the winning team being whichever accumulates the most driven miles. The contest aims to teach practical STEM skills such as engineering, budgeting, fundraising and project management, offering an alternative to conventional textbook learning.

The race was founded in 1993 by Texas educator Dr Lehman Marks, after a group of his disengaged students became captivated by a university solar car project and pushed him to let them build their own. Realising high schoolers could not fairly compete against better-resourced college teams, Marks created a dedicated competition for secondary students, which held its first national event in 1995. Since then, the programme has involved more than 85,000 students across 39 US states and several countries, including Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain and Singapore, and currently supports over 260 active high school solar car projects.