For the past 20 years, Purdue Solar Racing (PSR) has been designing and building a variety of solar powered vehicles. While these cars have all varied greatly in their designs and manufacturing processes,  Shell Eco-marathon’s urban concept category motivated PSR to enter into a completely unexplored realm with its eighth car, Celeritas.

Urban concept vehicles must meet all or most of the necessary safety and weight requirements so that they can be driven on city streets. Celeritas is considered experimentally street-legal, since it is not equipped with air bags. The seven cars designed by PSR before Celeritas have all been “prototype” cars; they look more like futuristic vehicles than like today’s cars. In addition, world-wide solar car races almost