How College Racing Can Solve Cleantech's Biggest Crisis: Talent - CleanTechnica

The article highlights a critical talent shortage in the cleantech industry, particularly in engineers skilled at integrating electric powertrains with autonomous vehicle systems. While battery technology and charging infrastructure have advanced, the bottleneck now lies in finding graduates who can seamlessly combine perception, planning, and control technologies in electric vehicles. This gap is constraining the rapid deployment of clean, autonomous transportation at scale. A significant breakthrough occurred at the 2025 Formula SAE Electric competition held at Michigan International Speedway, where over 80 university teams competed under new rules that made autonomous driving capabilities mandatory. This competition, which evolved from the traditional Formula SAE (focused on combustion engines since 1980) and launched its electric division in 2013, now requires students to build electric race cars capable of navigating courses without human input. The success of teams like Oregon State University, San Jose State, and Georgia Tech demonstrated that universities are now effectively training engineers with the multidisciplinary skills needed by cleantech companies such as Tesla and Rivian.