Even on a sunny day in June, there are few more unspectacular places in America for a dream road trip to limp to an end than the Holiday Inn parking lot in Logansport, Indiana. This is especially true—and the sunshine especially ironic—when you’re driving a homemade solar car, attempting to complete the first solar-powered trip across America.
So it was for Kyle Samluk ’24, Danny Ezzo ’25, and Will Jones in the summer of 2021. The friends had spent nearly a year dreaming up, designing, and building what they hoped would be the first car fully powered by sunlight to complete the infamous cross-country road race known as the Cannonball Run. Conceived in 1971 by late Car and Driver editor Brock Yates and popularized in a series of Hollywood films in the 1970s and early ’80s starring Burt Reynolds, the renegade road race between New York and Los Angeles has since evolved into a self-guided contest of dodging police and suppressing bowel movements using military-grade tactical dehydration pills while averaging speeds well above any speed limit in America.
“We’re car guys, so early on during the pandemic, we started seeing reports and tales of people breaking Cannonball Run speed records, because there was no traffic,” Will says. “So we had the idea of doing a Cannonball Run in a solar car. It seemed like sort of a safe, legal way to participate in this outlaw event. We thought it might inspire people to get more interested in solar power and other alternative energy sources. Plus, no one had ever driven a solar car from New York to Los Angeles. It seemed like an epic adventure and an epic challenge.”
Read this article in full in MTU’s 2025 Tech Magazine here.
