How Solis turns students into practising engineers

The energy news site energynomics.ro presents Solis as an educational laboratory: a 200 kg vehicle with solar panels above 24% efficiency, able to exceed 100 km/h and cover thousands of kilometres on public roads. The project started in 2018 at the initiative of Professor Ștefan Breban, and the first vehicle was finished in 2021. Since then, the magazine says, the team has built a new or improved vehicle every year.

“In the end we really do build vehicles from scratch that end up being driven on public roads. And we build them ourselves, the students.”

Raymond Nemeth, Solis Technical Team Manager

Students design and make almost every subsystem, from steering and mechanical parts to software and electronics. They even make their own solar panels: the team buys silicon cells and encapsulates them itself, reaching over 24% efficiency against about 21% for commercial panels. The battery is 3 kWh and weighs 15 kg, and three wheels, low rolling-resistance tyres and 100% Ackermann steering keep losses down.

The article reports that at the 2025 World Solar Challenge Hyperion travelled 2,717 km of the 3,020 km route before it had to stop because of extreme weather. Along the way the team fixed a battery management system failure in 90 minutes at the roadside and camped five nights in the desert.

Technical Team Manager Raymond Nemeth says the students see a vehicle built from start to finish, something they would not see at an automotive company. The magazine counts more than 20 students and more than 30 supporting organisations, among them BelcoAvia, VTV, AJ Brand, Axpo, ebm-papst and Bosch, and closes with a call to new sponsors.