Cross Keys students plan to build solar car

By Joe Earle on February 23, 2012.
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Cross Keys students Daniel Mosquerda, left, and Joel Vasquez, center, work on a form while Georgia Tech student Corbin Klett, right, supervises.

Members of Cross Keys High School’s robotics team have taken on another high-tech project. They’re planning on building a sun-powered car.

Members of the team spend Wednesday evenings and some weekends at the Georgia Tech Student Competition Center near the Tech campus in Midtown, where they assist the college’s Solar Jackets in building their solar car. The Cross Keys students plan to use skills learned from the project in the construction of their own solar car for a high school competition in Texas in July.

“It’s basically the same people [as the robotics team],” junior Javier Guerra said one recent evening when he and other team members cleaned sawdust from a wooden form built to create a mold for the body of the Georgia Tech car. “We’ve taken on the challenge to build the car. … The Georgia Tech people saw building a car in five months is a challenge. It is an ambitious plan.”

Patrick Gunter, director of the Cross Keys Manufacturing Center, says the Cross Keys team, called Endeavour after the Space Shuttle Endeavour, plans to build a car to enter in the Winston Solar Challenge in Texas. The event describes itself as a competition to teach high school students from around the world to build roadworthy solar cars. Gunter said he worked at a South Carolina high school where students built and raced one of the cars several years ago.

“It is one of the most challenging engineering programs for high school students in the world,” Gunter said. “Students need to be challenged, to raise that bar. …So many of our students today don’t have that challenge. … [This is] something most engineers don’t experience, much less high school students. I put this at the top of challenges for students.”

Gunter said parts for the car will be donated and that the final cost of the project could top $100,000 in value. Some parts already are stockpiled at Georgia Tech, where the students plan to build the car.

Gunter said he expects the car to be completed in time to compete in July. “I’ve never been in a race I didn’t start and complete,” he said. “I start the car and I finish the car. I start the race and I finish the race.”

Working at Tech “allows some of these students to be mentored [by Tech students],” Gunter said. “These students are receiving a great foundation to help them go into engineering.”

One recent evening, one group of the Cross Keys students vacuumed and swept up dust in a small curtained area in one portion of the cavernous building while a second, smaller group of students assembled wooden supports to hold metal frame parts for welding.

“They’re a lot of help,” said Corbin Klett, president of the Solar Jackets. “They’re getting ready to build their own solar car, so they’re coming here to learn stuff.”

They’re having fun, too, the Cross Keys students say. Senior Lord Nicklyn Labiano, who hopes to study aeronautical engineering in college, said the car project is giving him some practical experience. “I need to work hands-on,” he said.

Besides, he said, “I think it’s going to be fun. I’m one of the drivers.”

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