A car doesn't have to be something like a McLaren P1 to push our buttons. One of the most exciting rides we had in 2015 was also the least-powerful: the Schulich Delta, a solar-powered racer designed and built by a team of students at the University of Calgary. The ride was courtesy of National Geographic's Breakthrough, which had brought the University's solar car team to New York as part of the same promotion as the McLaren. The Delta was also made out of carbon fiber composites, but after that it's harder to find similarities with the P1.

It was built for the 2013 World Solar Challenge, which introduced a new "cruiser class" for cars that were a little more practical than the single seat solar racers most of us are familiar with. The Schulich Delta is still ultra lightweight—just 630 lbs (286kg)—and still very aerodynamic, but there's room for a passenger inside its carbon and Kevlar shell. According to Derek Lee, "even doors are an innovation in the solar car world." Lee—like the rest of his team, a student and volunteer—is in charge of the engineering effort and was on hand to talk us around the car.

Composites and expanded polystyrene foam make up the chassis, with Kevlar used in places where electricity-conducting carbon fiber wouldn't be suitable. The roof-mounted solar panels feed a 14kWh lithium-ion battery, and there are a pair of 2hp (1.5kW) motors that drive the rear wheels. Showing us around the Schulich Delta, Lee pointed out the checkerboard finish on the solar panels.

The angle at which light hits a photovoltaic cell affects how much electricity gets produced; unlike a static solar panel, that angle constantly changes on a moving vehicle. The squares are a coating on top of the Schulich Delta's solar panels that reflects light from different angles down onto the photovoltaic cells below at the optimum angle. The result is panels that are 23.9 percent efficient (almost double that of the solar panels we put on our roofs).

Even on a cloudy day in Manhattan's anthropocene canyons there's enough light to power the Schulich Delta, but Lee told us that on a sunny day—somewhere like the Circuit of the Americas in Texas (where the team competed in the 2015 Formula Sun Grand Prix, coming ninth)—the car could harvest and store enough energy to drive around the clock.

It took a year to design and a year to build, and the students did it all. The body was designed with the help of computational fluid dynamics—although Lee maintained a healthy skepticism about the accuracy of computer modeling in the real world. With his help I strapped into the carbon fiber bucket seat, donned a helmet for safety reasons, and then set off around the block with Ryan Ma at the wheel.

That wheel makes the car stop and go as well as turn. A dial on the spoke by Ma's right thumb controls acceleration, and another by his left controls deceleration via regenerative braking. As only the rear wheels are powered, only the rear wheels recover energy, but there is also a mechanical brake system for emergencies. In front of Ma was an LCD dashboard giving him a readout of the car's vital statistics. Between us on the center console was a 10-inch screen for the backup camera, a necessity when surface area is too precious to waste on a rear window, and side mirrors cause too much drag.

We had an escort walking ahead on foot, reminiscent of the men who had to wave red flags and walk in front of cars in the UK in the 19th century. Traffic by Madison Square Garden was too heavy to reach the Schulich Delta's 65mph top speed, particularly since the car wasn't designed for acceleration. Neither was it optimized for the state of NYC's roads, bouncing and jolting on potholes that even the McLaren barely noticed.

The motors never got into their higher range, so it was also a noisy trip. Ma told us once the car picks up speed things quiet down immensely, but at just a few miles an hour things sounded distinctly industrial behind the firewall that separated the cabin from the batteries and motor.

The amount of work put into the car by the students was most impressive. Lee told us it took a year to design and another year to build, and the team's justifiable pride in its accomplishments was plain to see. The students we spoke to also offered a now-familiar refrain when we asked them about the value of going (solar) racing, highlighting how the pressure-cooker environment of a race focuses minds and activity like little else.

It may be some time yet before a solar-powered car is something you see on the public road, even in sunny climes, but when we do, there's a good chance some of its roots will have started growing at the University of Calgary.