X Prize For a 100-MPG Car

Heinen writes in about the X Prize Foundation, which spurred innovation by offering US $10 million for the first privately built spacecraft. The Foundation now plans to offer millions for the first practical car that increases mileage five-fold. The specs for the competition are out in draft form amd call for cars in two categories that are capable of 100 MPG in tests to be run in 2009. The categories are: 4-passenger/4-wheel; and 2-passenger/unspecified wheels. The cars must be manufacturable, not "science projects. The prize is expected to top $10 million. The X Prize Foundation says that so far it has received more than 1,000 inquiries from possible competitors.

Comments

VW 80% there

[laptop006]

VW already have a production car that gets ~80mpg and have had trial cars beat 300mpg in real traffic. Of all the big car companies they're the most likely ones to do this, yet as a big car company the $10m would be far less useful then the promotion.

VW have beten them to it already

[farmerj]

VW already have a concept 1 litre car. The 1 litre refers to the fuel consummation of 1 litre per 100 km. Now for the non metric people here this equates to 235 miles per US gallon or 282 mpg Imperial.

More pictures and info here and here. Now this is a two seat car, and if you follow the links above, you'll see not the most spacious.

VW also produce a 3 litre car, the Lupo. The fuel consummation here is 78 miles per US gallon or 94 miles per Imperial gallon and this car is in production, and will hold four people and a wee bit of luggage.

With this in mind, does this competition sound like its really pushing the envelope?

Re:VW have beten them to it already

[farmerj]

Just re-read the rules [PDF].
For the two passenger car, the passengers need to be seated side by side, which would rule out the VW 1-litre in its current form.

The 3-litre Lupo should be a different matter. Its based on the normal Lupo, though with a lot of the steel replaced with aluminium. It's kerb weight is 853 kg or 1,882 pounds, which for the competition, I'm sure could be improved. As far as aerodynamics, well it's a super mini, so massive gains could be taken there.

Now the 0 to 100 km/h is 14.5 seconds which would be probably the main problem, however remember this car was introduced in 2003, so some gains should have been made in the meantime.
All figures taken from the VWvortex review.

All in all I would be very happy to be in the position that VW are in, at the start of this competition.

Re:sorry to troll, but...

[Dachannien]

Actually, you raise a very good point. As another example, take ethanol-blended gasoline versus straight gasoline. It's known that in terms of miles per gallon, ethanol blends are somewhat less fuel efficient than gasoline-only blends. It's clear, however, that energy utilization per volume isn't the proper metric for fuel, or else farmers would be the only ones touting ethanol blends as a potential 1.5th-generation fuel.

How do you measure the fuel efficiency of a solar-powered car? Measured by volume, its fuel consumption is infinite, since it uses volumeless photons as its fuel. Even measuring it by utilization efficiency (energy out over energy in) confounds the true goal of next-generation fuels, that being to reduce environmental impact, since the impact of solar power is entirely in the manufacture and disposal of the panels. How do you measure that?

And what's more, if somebody actually did develop a solar powered car that had performance characteristics comparable to compact gasoline-powered cars and was in the same ballpark in terms of price (perhaps taking comparable petroleum-based fuel costs into account), wouldn't it be unfair to deny this prize to the car's designers even though they went, ahem, the extra mile to bring the next generation of vehicles to the public?

Re:Better X-Prize

[Animats]

The problem with the X-prize was that all the money was in first place. When Space Ship One won it, there was no financial incentive for the others to keep going.

The classic example of that was the Kremer Prize for human-powered flight, won in 1977. Once that was done, interest in human-powered flight declined substantially. That effort didn't usher in an era of recreational pedal-powered flying.

Re:Changing percpetion

[JonBuck]

These cars should not be designed by people who only see them as Point A to Point B transportation. A car has always been much more than that. If you really want something that people will buy, you have to build something desirable that can offer great performance and great efficiency at once.

Want to know what I mean? Look up Tesla's electric roadster.

Your ancient 1300cc beater might serve you well, but don't for one minute think that everyone wants or can have your lifestyle.

Competition Guidelines (PDF)

[Migraineman]

They've published the Draft Competition Guidelines.

Lots of folks are knee-jerking with "what about electric vehicles?" Unfortunately, the Slashdot summary is misleading ... again. The X-Prize folks are citing a "100 Mile Per Gallon Equivalent," or MPGe. They account for electric vehicles. You can use natural gas as a fuel, or biodeisel, or E85. For the "mainstream" vehicle, it has to have a radio, air conditioning, etc. It's in the linked doc above.

There are performance specs too. The vehicle must go at least 80 mph for the 2-seater; 100 mph for the 4-seater. Braking 60-0 must be less than 170 ft. They don't require crash testing, but expect you to demonstrate that you've built something to contrmporaty standards for front and side impacts. The standard compliment of mirrors, reflectors, indicators and gauges are required as well.

The end of the document describes their objectives and how they came up with their requirements. It's a pretty easy document to read, and it gives you some insight into what they're trying to do (hint: it involves eventual production of the vehicle.)

Re:Light != dangerous

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Where I grew up in Northern Nevada on interstate 80 the speed limit is 75 mph about 60 miles east of Reno. Here in Texas many of the highways are 75 mph in the day, 65 at night, but this is the same state that doesn't require motorcycle helmets so judge accordingly.

Re:What about Electric

[rossifer]

The reason is that a 10h charge gets you 1 hour on the road.

In the EV I'm converting (1998 Saturn SW2 wagon), twelve hours of charging (110V/20A) gets me 85 miles. That's about 25kWh or $3.50. Since the car used to get 28mpg, that's about a third the price of gas for the same distance, even with SoCal's inflated electricity prices (we also have inflated gas prices). For everything up to the occasional road trip, 85 miles per day is more than enough. We've got a second car for the road trips, so that's covered too.

If you want an electric car, you're probably going to have to deal with renting the battery, and having swap-out stations.

Unlikely, at best. Manufacturers will have to come to some agreement on what a standard pack looks like, mechanical and electrical connections, etc. Can't have too much variety (or the storage cost goes through the roof), but you'll have to support commuter cars up through heavy trucks. A battery swap station will need a large warehouse built on good foundations to store enough battery packs to service an average day. And why would I want to exchange my carefully maintained batteries that cost me $3000 with an expected life of 100k miles for some unknown set that someone else may have abused or be near the end of life?

Not to say what you're talking about will never happen (though I'm extremely skeptical), but for 95%+ of my driving, plugging in overnight works great. Actually, since my commute is only 7 miles each way, I'll only need to charge for about two hours to get back to 80%+. Now, if I need to drop the kids off at a couple of activities, get groceries, do a few other errands, and take the family out for an evening's entertainment? The car will need to charge the whole time that I'm asleep and be topped off with a full charge when I wake up in the morning.

Electric cars are a lot more practical than most people think. Mine will cost me $15k, take 200 hours of my time, will do 80mph and get 85 miles on a charge that costs me $3.50 while hauling four people or light hauling. Some might want to include the 200 hours in the cost, however, I won't bill myself for the time since I find it so enjoyable to work on it and would pay extra to have this much fun :)

Regards,
Ross

Re:What about SAFETY?

[rs79]

"Lets face it, the reason why a lot of people are driving big SUV's and suffering with 20 MPG highway 15 MPG city is because of the marvelous 5 STAR safety rating these vehicles provide."

As if.

http://money.cnn.com/2001/06/04/home_auto/pickups_ crash/

"WASHINGTON (CNN) - The nation's top-selling vehicle, the Ford F-150 pickup truck, fared poorly in high-speed crash tests, according to a new study of large pickup trucks by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which found the results ranged from good to poor for other makes and models.

In 40 mph tests, the institute characterized the safety performance of the Ford F-150 and Dodge Ram as poor. In the case of the F-150, the institute said it's about as "bad as it gets."

A mini cooper is safer in an accident.

http://www.bridger.us/2002/12/16/CrashTestingMINIC ooperVsFordF150

Re:Metric

[jschmerge]

Keep in mind that governments around the world mandate much higher fuel efficiency in autos than the US. Europe especially so.

The kind of car that can get 100 mpg

[iangoldby]

Except that it isn't.

There already exists a car that can get 65 mpg - routinely - not on some secret test track. It has been available for about six years, and there are millions already on the roads in Europe. It's called the Renault Clio dCI and I have one. It is about the same size as any other super-mini and has a four star (out of five) European safety rating. It's quite lively - pulls away quickly and goes well over 80 mph. The Clio is not the only car of its class - there are others with similar performance and specification.

Why is this remarkable? It is not.

The only remarkable thing is that more people don't seem to know about this. Until fuel prices start to reflect the true cost of motoring, many people seem to prefer to bury their heads in the sand and continue to drive their gas-guzzling monsters.

And the X-prize? It sounds as though it shouldn't be too hard to hit that 100 mpg figure. The real challenge is the change of perception required from the public.

Re:The kind of car that can get 100 mpg

[Askmum]

65 mpg? 78 mpg (3 liter / 100 km) is being claimed by VW and Audi even claims 81 mpg, although those values apparently are hard to reach during normal operation. There are other cars that are also above the 77 mpg mark, Citroen C2, VW Polo, Smart. But I expect that these cars are absolutely unknown to the US, as they are almost all less than 12 feet long.

If you combine these cars with stop-n-go (where the engine stops when you are stationary), small hybrid systems (smaller than in a Prius), you will get 90 mpg with no problem and I also think that 100 mpg will not be that hard.

Austin Rover Montego

[bwian]

At one point around 1990, Austin in the UK produced a Montego (mid-sized saloon car) with a Perkins Diesel engine that could perform 100 MPG (note: British gallons) and 100 MPH (but not at the same time)

Pictures of Austin Montego: http://www.austin-rover.co.uk/index.htm?sipanimont ef.htm

Reference to the 100 MPG / 100 MPH Montego : http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t =31246

Re:We'll fix that right after we get cold fusion.

[jonwil]

A good place to start would be to bust whatever myths exist that cause the "soccer moms" to buy minivans and SUVs instead of station wagons.
A good station wagon can carry the kids and the shopping just as easily as an SUV or a minivan and because it isn't so big and heavy and because it doesn't have 4 x 4 will probably get better mileage.

Not 5-fold

[__aahlyu4518]

Fivefold?????

Hmm... Let's see...

1 Gallon = 3.785 liters
100 Miles = 160.9 kms

So this equals to 42.5 km's per liter.

That is just 2-fold.. lots of cars are already sold that can do 20 km/l !!!

58 mpg

[motumboe]

My Fiat Punto MultiJet requires 25km/l (58mpg unless I'm wrong) for its everyday real use, and it was produced in 2002. So I think that the goal is not that far.

Since when was 100mpg a five-fold increase?

[DrHyde]

There are few cars on the market today, at least in the UK, which do less than 20mpg. I drive a large, heavy pickup with a big engine. I drive fast. I get over 30mpg normally (averaged over the last 10,000 miles). And that's without even trying to drive economically. Over 50mpg is not unusual in common cars.

Re:Changing percpetion

[shmlco]

" fuel efficient = excessively low acceleration and/or low top speed "

Let's see, a Telsa gets about 135mpg (equivalent), 250 miles per charge, has a top end of over 130mph, and does 0-60 in 4 seconds. It's also about $90,000 at the moment, but 0-60 in 4 seconds is well into high-end Ferrari/Porsche/Lotus land. Point being that "fuel efficient" and "excessively low acceleration and/or low top speed" don't preclude one another.

It's also scheduled to go into production in about four months. Hmmm. Wonder why they haven't already won the prize?

Re:100MPG? Whaat is that?

[kill-1]

http://www.google.com/search?q=100mpg

100 miles per gallon = 42.5143706 kilometers per liter

Re:We'll fix that right after we get cold fusion.

[BigDogCH]

Which is precisely the problem.....idiots. We will pay for this idiocy in time....we are only now starting to realize the true cost of our stupidity.

Re:Light != dangerous

[GooberToo]

State officials don't want to change them because they fund the police force via speeding tickets.

Not so. Maybe a decade ago several states tried to raise their speed limits. The Federal government came back and said lower your speed limits or you lose federal highway dollars. The states complied. In other words, many states are more than happy to raise the legal speed limit but Washington has made it clear that the states have no say if they want to continue to receive federal highway dollars.

Re:What about SAFETY?

[coredog64]

Regarding that Mini vs. F-150 picture, the people who stage the test and take that picture warn against using them as direct comparisons.

It's important to note that both tests can only be used to get an idea of how the vehicle would perform in a collision with a vehicle of similar size and weight or in a single-vehicle collision, which results in essentially the same forces as a collision with a similarly sized vehicle. They cannot be used to assess how a vehicle would fare if it collides with a vehicle that is significantly different in size.

Note, that for the Mini, that's what it looks like when it hits another Mini @ 40 -- good luck if it hits anything bigger, like, you know, an xB ;)

Re:Key concepts

[IwantToKeepAnon]

The EU? Ha! That joke has been around longer than the EU has. It is usually attributed to the American Mark Twain:
    http://www.wisdomquotes.com/001233.html