Xenith

The Stanford Solar Car Project has been working for two years on its latest all-solar vehicle, called Xenith, which later this year will travel across the Australian Outback powered by nothing but sunlight. The team says Xenith is the fastest solar car ever built.

The World Solar Challenge is held every two years and challenges teams to build ultra-efficient solar vehicles in a 3,000-kilometer (or 1,864-mile) race from Darwin to Adelaide. This year's race will take place October 16-23.

Based on the notion that a 1,000-watt car would complete the journey in 50 hours, the solar cars are allowed a nominal 5 kilowatt-hours of stored energy.

The rules, however, change for each event, giving teams just two years to conceptualize and build their vehicles. The idea is to constantly push the boundaries of what the vehicle can be, ranging in designs from ultraconceptual abstract ideas that may be less practical, and working toward real-world applications of energy efficiency that could be applied to future consumer products.