Slashdot Mirror
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.
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?
Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth. G.B Shaw
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?
They've published the Draft Competition Guidelines.
Lots of folks are knee-jerking with "what about electric vehicles?" Unfortunately, the Slashdot summary is misleading
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.)
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
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.