“It’s a conversation starter,” said Louis, who recently graduated from Georgetown University.
The Rosa brothers' car is hard to miss!
Younger brother Nick is a senior at the California Institute of Technology. When gas prices rose last summer, the brothers decided to challenge themselves.
We were talking about electric cars and thought ‘maybe we can do this ourselves’, ” Nick said, noting that other electric cars being sold, such as the Tesla Roadster and Fisker Karma, cost around $100,000.
With the car kit and components, the brothers found that the car would only cost $18,000.
Last month, Louis and Nick visited the Mississippi State campus. A few EocCAR team members attended a luncheon with the brothers and invited them to the Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems to show them the team’s work and talk about their struggles and successes.
“It’s great that people in our community are getting involved with green technologies, even if they don’t have a background in engineering,” said Ryan Williams, senior EcoCAR mechanical group leader.
Overall, it was a nice surprise and gave the team inspiration going into competition!
Louis Rosa posing with the electric vehicle
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