Ford made headlines last week when it unveiled plans to make mass-produced solar-powered cars a reality with the C-Max Solar Energi.

The reality is fully solar vehicles have been around for decades. Alabama University Professor Ed Passerini built the “Bluebird,” a prototype solar call with no back-up batteries, in 1977.

Since the 80s, teams of university students and corporation-sponsored engineers have competed in annual solar car races. Bridgestone sponsors perhaps the best known, the World Solar Challenge, in which teams compete to build a driver-operated vehicle that can traverse more than 1,800 miles of the Australian Outback using sunlight as its only source of fuel.

Here comes the sun? Automakers renew solar-power options – Chicago Tribune.