Driving Innovation: Engineering the Next Generation of Green Race Cars
- Ritambhara K
- Jul 18
- 3 min read
Students at Texas A&M University have developed a sustainable race car tailored for both amateur and semi-professional racing circuits.
Henry Waggoner, a recently graduated undergraduate student, sits in a prototype car designed to bring affordable hybrid technologies to amateur and pro-am racing leagues. | Image: Wendy Herrick/Texas A&M Engineering
In the fast-paced world of motorsports, the push for sustainability is driving major leagues like Formula 1 to invest in hybrid technologies to cut emissions. However, such advancements are often too costly for smaller racing organizations. Amateur and pro-am leagues, lacking the resources of professional teams, are seeking more budget-friendly solutions to go green.
To tackle this challenge, a team of engineering students from Texas A&M University, with backing from the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA)—the world’s largest active motorsports membership group—has developed a cost-effective hybrid system. Their innovation offers grassroots racers a way to embrace environmental responsibility without sacrificing performance on the track.
“Our goal was to build a hybrid race car that’s fun, affordable, and fast—to prove that even entry-level racing can keep up with evolving sustainability demands,” explained Snyder.
Under his guidance, a team of 14 engineering students from Aggies Create took on the challenge of designing a budget-friendly hybrid system that overcomes the common issues of high cost, large size, and performance drawbacks seen in current setups.
About a year into the project, a capstone team from the Electronic Systems Engineering Technology (ESET) program—Jacqueline Aleman, Jay Fernandez, Ryan Keener, and Henry Waggoner—joined the effort. Backed by sponsorship from the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and expert support from ESET faculty Dr. Lee Hudson and Dr. Eman Hammad, the team developed an electric front-wheel drivetrain. Meanwhile, the Aggies Create team concentrated on the car’s rear combustion engine and physical design components.
The project’s breakthrough came from successfully integrating a front-wheel electric drive with a rear-wheel combustion engine—without any internal mechanical link between the two axles.
“This design is known as a ‘through-the-road’ hybrid, meaning the only connection between the electric and combustion systems is via the road itself,” explained Fernandez.
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To enhance performance, the team added features like regenerative braking and a push-to-pass system. Regenerative braking captures energy during deceleration, recharging the battery and boosting the combustion engine's performance—improving acceleration while conserving fuel. The push-to-pass feature delivers a burst of power to the electric motor, providing ten seconds of acceleration for up to 200 seconds per race. Keener likened it to “using a mushroom in Mario Kart.”
Safety was a top priority throughout the design. The team rigorously tested hardware and built in multiple software fail-safes to ensure system reliability at high speeds. Measures included watchdog timers, controlled startup sequences, communication safeguards, redundancy checks, and a manual kill switch.
The ESET team earned an impressive second place out of 361 entries at Texas A&M’s 2025 Engineering Capstone Showcase. Their project stood out not just for achieving a working prototype, but for delivering a fully functional, competitive electric drive system.
“We’re proud to have built a system that lowers carbon emissions while preserving high performance and the authentic racing experience,” said Aleman. “It’s also designed to be affordable for the SCCA to produce and adopt.”
The Sports Car Club of America now has the car in its initial prototype phase, aiming to conduct track tests by the end of 2025. The long-term plan is to scale up production and integrate the system into competitive racing.
The students from Texas A&M take pride in their role in supporting the future of grassroots motorsports, showcasing the tangible impact of Aggie engineering on real-world challenges.
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