Amidst the huge push for Americans to "go green", and drive less polluting cars, a new form of automobile transport, the electric car, has begun to gain press. One instance of this was the North American Solar Challenge held recently.

The race is no small feat: a 2400 mile race in a custom built car which runs solely on the energy of the Sun. The University of Michigan team won the race in 51 hours 42 minutes, meaning their average speed was about 46 miles per hour. The next closest team from Principia College finished in about 62 hours with the third and fourth coming in about two hours later.

What is amazing about the second place victory is that it came from a college of fewer than 550 students all of them undergraduates. For a team of college students to design and create a car capable of racing 2400 miles cross country and come in second place to a very large college like Michigan, it is quite a feat, even if they were ten hours slower.

As a race though, the North American Solar Challenge is very effective at showcasing the effectiveness, and legitimacy of electric cars as an alternative form of automobile transport and solar power as an alternative form of energy to fossil fuels. While these cars are simply meant to win a race, the technology that they use, and the fact that teams of young college students can create them, shows the auto industry and American public just how great electric cars can be.

Imagine never having to pay for gas again, and simply leaving your car in the sun to charge. Right now the technology is not efficient enough: solar panels work for extremely light and streamlined cars like the ones in the race, but for regular cars they are not capable at producing nearly enough energy to power anything other than the electronics and inside lights. Today common solar panels are 12-18% efficient which is actually four times greater than a few years ago. There are already panels in development that reportedly get up to 40% efficiency which would almost triple how much energy a panel on a car could generate.