Posted on Friday 1 February 2008
The current Automotive X-Prize has set out the challenge of building and racing a commercially viable vehicle capable of meeting set emissions targets while achieving at least 100mpg in fuel economy. It’s the type of challenge you’d think at least one major carmaker would be interested in, but seems they’re all too busy with their own projects to get caught up with the whole contest.
The X-Prize group approached most of the major carmakers to either enter the comp or at least sponsor one of the 50 other teams competing but none have committed to the project. A key issue for carmakers, X-Prize organizer Donald Foley told Reuters, is the potential risk of losing to a small start-up.
Carmakers, on the other hand, claim they’re already pursuing the right technology for their futures. GM said it was already involved in similar projects with Carnegie Mellon University and didn’t have time to partner with every group trying to create an ultra-efficient vehicle. Ford’s response is that it has its own fuel-saving technologies to worry about such as its new EcoBoost program.
X-Prize officials are still hoping for a big-name carmaker to join the competition but aren’t holding their breaths. “We would very much like them to participate, and over the last year we’ve talked to many OEMs and our view is we want their participation,” Foley said. “We also understand that this is a decision for many of them that will involve a degree of risk.”
Well, to make a car that efficient, it would have to be tiny and weak and have very little extra features. Chances are that no one would want to buy it so the automakers thought screw wasting money on something no one would buy.
100 may have been too high a number right now.
50?
To SuperSkyline89 - I thought so too, when I first heard about the contest, but there is a loop hole which makes it more realistic. Electricity is counted as the same as gasoline per MJ, which gives it about a 3x edge in efficiency (because a car can use electricity at 90% efficiency, but gasoline only at about 30% efficiency). Which means that a car which gets 50 MPG on gasoline can get 150 “MPGe” (miles per gallon equivalent, the AXP name for their conversion system) on electricity, and therefore plug-in hybrids need only be about as good as the Prius + do half their mileage on electricity to get 100 MPG.
Additionally, of course, the alternative class lets competitors build “cars” which are more like enclosed motorcycles, which have very favorable aerodynamics and weight. Some of them look surprisingly like something people might buy - for instance the Aptera. Some of these are tiny, but very few are weak - most do 0-60 in 10 seconds or less, and some in 6 seconds or less
For more information, please check out my website: X Prize Cars
Eric,
Thanks for that info, I never knew that. I checked out your website and some of those cars really do look like “normal” cars.