A look in the rearview mirror—and full speed ahead for the JU Solar Team

From late nights in the workshop at JTH to the finish line in Australia – the JU Solar Team 2025 reflected on their journey and bid farewell.

“You really are a completely different person after JU Solar Team. It was incredibly rewarding,” says Maja Nyström.

Now they’re passing the baton to the next team.

The reunion and handover ceremony took place at the School of Engineering at Jönköping University on April 16, attended by sponsors and staff, among others. Maja mentions that she learned to solve problems under intense time pressure and had to put theories from school into practice during her time with the JU Solar Team. She misses the dedication and strong team spirit, but at the same time now has time for other things.

“It was fun to get together again and meet the new team. They’re going to do great, and it’ll be fun to follow their journey,” she says.

"A wealth of knowledge and experience"

Axelent has been the main sponsor of the JU Solar Team since 2019, and Andreas Lanz, CEO of Hilcon (formerly Axelent Solutions), describes the team as a flagship for JTH, attracting more driven and curious engineers.

"The participants in the solar car team learn about group dynamics and gain a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience, which will be of great benefit to them in their future careers. These are also students we’re interested in. We hired two of them last year, and it’s clear they have something special," says Andreas Lanz.

"They are incredibly important to us"

The new solar car team is supported by the previous one and draws a lot of inspiration from them.

“They’re incredibly important to us, and we’re making the most of everything we can from their work and the challenges they faced,” says Tilda Tellfjord, a newcomer to the solar car scene.

She thinks the new team has strong cohesion and adds that there were plenty of laughs when they competed against each other with their homemade radio-controlled cars. The solar car headed to Australia is still in the design phase.

“The goal is always to win; then we’ll see where we end up. We’re going to do our best, and if we do better than the previous team, you could say we’ve succeeded,” says Tilda.