These bullet-shaped electric race cars are turning teens into engineers

"Formula E approached us about the School Series, it seemed like a natural progression for us to grow the profile of Greenpower," says Jeremy Way, the company’s CEO. Greenpower signed a five-race deal with Formula E to function as its supporting series, bringing its tech-club-meets-EV-racing to new places like Buenos Aires, Berlin, and the US. And while it's not going to feed promising young drivers into Formula E, it's a great way to help kids care more about electric vehicles.

Like most student engineering competitions, it exists to encourage and promote STEM education. In fact, the series was started after a 1998 study found a decline in the number of young people in the UK entering the engineering workforce. The drivers and their crews are all in their teens, and come from high schools and charter schools local to each race — these aren’t Andrettis and Earnhardts. In Miami, almost all of them were in some sort of technology or robotics club, but many of them had never raced anything at all — at least not in the real world.

"I’m the best person ever to play Mario Kart, I can’t be defeated." said Daniella Kennedy, a 17-year-old student on the robotics team at Inlet Grove High School in Riviera Beach, Florida. She’s beaten her friends time and time again on Rainbow Road, but she had never competed against anyone on pavement or asphalt. She didn’t even have a driver’s permit.

That was the consensus of the boys and girls who raced in Miami, who, despite their inexperience, were somehow totally unfazed about driving on the same course as the racing veterans of Formula E.

The 10 teams received kits about five weeks before the event and were given one set of instructions: use all the parts provided with no modifications. That included an electric motor; a handful of small, 50-pound batteries; a thin, metal body frame; and some rubber wheels. Fully completed, the cars look more like they belong in some sort of futuristic soap box derby thanks to their large, solid rims and sleek chassis.

While we often hear in the US that our students are falling behind in fields like science, technology, and math, Way says he was surprised at how quickly the kids in Miami took to the cars. "The [US] students seem very technically capable compared to UK students of the same age," he says. "They are much more technically aware, which is really nice to see."

It was up to the teams to find a place to practice, too. The Inlet Grove team used their school’s bus depot (Kennedy apparently almost drove under one while practicing: "It was a close call," she says). Another team told stories about weaving in between joggers on their school’s rubber running track.

The cars top out at about 30mph under their own power (though one student in Miami claimed he broke 40 on the hill next to the American Airlines Arena), and it took them almost four minutes to complete the circuit. (The 270-horsepower Formula E cars made that same circuit in closer to a minute.) The racing was still exciting, though — a few students battled hard the entire 20-minute race, and the crowd thanked them with a roar every time they passed the grandstands.

While the students were discouraged from getting too aggressive, two drivers came together late in the race. One was squeezed hard enough into the wall that his car lost a wheel; the unlucky student pulled the limping car off the course, unable to finish the race. He was quick to show his frustration with a muffled shout from beneath his helmet: "He’s not supposed to do that!" The closest track worker took the chance to teach him a lesson that’s older than the NASCAR drivers who constantly preach it: "Rubbin’ is racin’."