Longhorn Racing team members add decals to their gas powered racer. (Eric Henrikson/KXAN)
AUSTIN (KXAN) — A University of Texas program known for attracting students and finding them jobs is facing new challenges this year.
“Given the current relationship with China, a lot of electronics products that we’re trying to pull in, they can get more expensive. They get delayed,” said Kellen Cao, Combustion Team Captain with Longhorn Racing.
Longhorn Racing has operated since the 1980s, helping students build mini F1 cars for competition. The students build internal combustion cars, electric and even solar powered vehicles.
On Saturday, April 19, three models of vehicles will roll out to the public from the team. The event will happen at 2 p.m. outside of the Engineering Education and Research Center (EER) at 2501 Speedway.
The cars cost upwards of $70,000 to build. The students said this year they’ve paid almost $10,000 more due to tariffs and purchasing restrictions in Texas.
The race against tariffs
“I used to not need to consider tariffs in any purchasing that we were doing. Until December, and then all of these websites have started implementing the tariffs section of like the purchasing,” said Solar Team Captain Michael Mohn.
AirPods dying? UT professor discovers microenvironment that may be responsible
“The wallets are hurting a little bit from these tariffs,” said Electric Team Chief Engineer Lani Hong.
While many parts were purchased last year, Mohn said he worries that increased prices will have a direct impact next year. Many of the parts his team needs are from the Europe and China.
A solar powered car awaits final adjustments just hours before its unveiling to the public. (Eric Henrikson/KXAN)
Another impact, Hong said, came as a result of Gov. Greg Abbott’s November 2024 executive order targeting the Chinese government’s involvement in Texas. She said that order has created challenges purchasing from China.
“China is our primary supplier for things like electronics boards, printed circuit boards. So that was a struggle,” Hong said.
“It’s getting a little more difficult to navigate the waters. But we’ve gotten some help and we’ve made it through right now and are pretty good,” said Hardhik “Hardy” Sripuram, Corporate Relations Officer with Longhorn Racing.
Longhorn Racing and UT
Cao said the Longhorn Racing program attracts students to the University of Texas. He, personally, was not aware of it before seeing a race car on campus.
“Honestly, our commodity that we’re selling and that we’re building is the engineer and not the car,” Sripuram said.
This summer, three teams will participate in several competitions. In May, the Combustion Team will take part in a speed trial. In June, the Electric Team will do the same. While on July 4 weekend, the Solar Team will race in an endurance trial.
“The goal with our car is not to build a car that can hit the top speed, or that can corner at the most rapid pace, but it rather is to complete a certain amount of laps in a certain amount of time,” Mohn said. “It’s three days straight of racing.”
Hong said that before joining Longhorn Racing, she didn’t even know what a nut or bolt was. Now she is building an electric race car.
Austin company unveils next-generation nuclear power plant
“You see so much young blood,” Hong said. “Some of them really know what they’re doing. They come from robotics teams, you know, have like an engineering background. Some of them have nothing.”
The solar team has successfully competed in 10 years. This year’s car is designed for a competition this summer and one cross country event next year. Called Daybreak, the vehicle weighs about 700 pounds and uses less power than a toaster.
Mohn said the program is inspirational in a way that solar powered devices typically aren’t.
“This gives it more of like an actually tangible purpose of it would be great if we could have cars that we didn’t even need to charge a plug into a wall, and we weren’t going to gas,” Mohn said.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin.
