Electric IndyCar Built by High School Students Displayed at IMS

Many different cars were on display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Emerging Tech Day including one car that was built by a group of inner-city high school students from Kansas City.

Steve Rees, Instructor at the MINDDRIVE program, says the kids were picked from an alternative school to work on the project.

"Started out as a class in creativity. Kids did a couple of styling exercises on automotive bodies and they kept saying 'why can't we do a real car?' and I kept saying 'we can't do that' and they kept asking and finally I realized I was in the box and they were thinking outside of the box," Reese says.

Rees says they found an old IndyCar formerly driven by Jimmy Vassar that had been crashed. They repaired it and rebuilt it with electric-power technology.

Each student also works with their own mentor in a specific field such as electrical, mechanical, or composite engineering. They also have a racing fabricator and a couple of designers working with the students.

One student, Mario Ramirez, says when he graduates, he wants to help develop environmentally friendly cars. WIBC.com