The space-age looking vehicle shown to you here is one of the greatest efforts by the Solar Car team of University of Michigan. It’s called Continuum, is on display at the Detroit Auto Show. The Continuum is a pretty expensive vehicle, which has couple of big names behind as the sponsors including General Motors, Ford, Michelin and Motorola.

The solar cars by the team have evolved through a few versions. Which the previous version needed the driver in a laying-down position for improved aerodynamics and reduced drag to achieve high speed. Whereas the latest version, the Continuum is having the driver in the sitting position and also the size of the solar cells has been reduced. The current version is now equipped with a rather clever solar energy collecting system. The system allows sunlight to be concentrated on special high yield solar cells using parabolic mirrors. And it still can achieve speeds upwards of 90mph.

The version displayed at the show seems to be a miniature version, which they had it to go for a test run in wind tunnels, to measure its performance instead of using the full-sized version. The smaller versions are to ensure the full size car is already well streamlined before it gets assembled. A great piece of work by University students!