While it doesn’t have the ring or the fame of the Indy 500, the World Solar Challenge can make one promise the Greatest Spectacle in Racing can’t: every single car in the competition is low-emission—because every single car in the competition is powered by the sun. Part of the bigger Global Green Challenge, which also includes a race that pits production vehicles—such as the Tesla Roadster and Honda Civic—against each other, the World Solar Challenge is a competition that sends solar racecars through roughly 1,880 miles of Australian desert, savannah and jungle in a low-emissions race to the finish.

This year’s race started at the city of Darwin and ended at Adelaide four days later, where the team from Japan’s Tokai University took home the gold in the “Tokai Challenger,” a futuristic vehicle sporting solar panels from Sharp and averaging 100.54 km/hr (62.57 miles/hr) over the 29 hours and 49 minutes that it spent on the racetrack. Like the cars from the 37 other teams in the race, Tokai’s wheeled contender looked vaguely like a UFO, with a small, cockpit-style driver’s seat and a large flat surface sporting a large array of solar panels. In second place was the Nuon team from the Netherlands, who had won the past four World Solar Challenges, and the team from the University of Michigan went home with third.

The World Solar Challenge 2009 winners (Credit: Global Green Challenge)

Though the contenders are all smiles in the pictures, the competition isn’t all frivolous fun and games. The idea behind the World Solar Challenge (and its umbrella competition, the Global Green Challenge) can ultimately pack a punch:

The World Car Challenge was inspired by a cross-Australia run adventurer Hans Tholstrup made in a solar car, “Quiet Achiever,” in 1982. The first organized event in 1987 was a celebrated one, open to all, and famously won by General Motors’ “Sunraycer.” That car (which looks much as the racers do today) was partly built by AeroVironment and its brilliant founder, Paul MacCready, and the collaboration led to future GM work on what became the EV-1 electric car.