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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.
It's possible to make cars that are 'manufacturable' that meet this, the real problem will be making cars that are manufacturable... AND sellable.
Is there a market for super efficient cars that look like tampons with wheels?
To get good fuel economy probably needs a mindshift away from SUVs and Hummers towards smaller 1300cc or smaller cars.
The "look" of cars is pretty much fashion driven, dictated by the car manufacturers to promote consumption. This year it's round headlights, next year square; boxy Hummer look one year, curved Porche look the next; big grill, then small.
Car manufacturers keep advertising more power, size etc (10% more power than last year's model, 5% more space...). How is it that they never advertise reduced consumption (well they might, but only if it does not compromise power, size etc)..
People really need to see cars as transport. Perhaps then they will start to think in terms of efficiency etc.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
SpaceShip Two is gearing up for private space flight as we speak. It has been less than three years since the X-Prize. Personal spaceflight is not an easy process, you shouldn't expect it to be commonplace tomorrow.
I read the internet for the articles.
IMO this contest is looking for a milestone in a direction we may not want to go. On the surface it may seem worthy, but new technologies may be making internal combustion engines obsolete in the next decade, and I can't really tell whether the contest rules will take these advances into account. How would one judge a vehicle powered by a hypercapacitor, or by compressed air? You're comparing apples to oranges by merely judging the equivalent energy used to power the vehicle; the ultimate cost of stored electricity may be a lot lower per joule than that in refined petroleum, or it could be higher. How does one judge the total carbon emissions for that electricity? Was it generated by a coal-burning plant, or by nuclear? Or wind, or sea?
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. ( I've seen the same thing in chess tournaments - the lower prizes are significant enough to keep people from dropping out )
It should have been something like 1st = 10 mil, 2nd = 5 mil, 3rd = 2.5 mil, 4th = 1.5 mil, 5th = 1 mil. Yes, it costs twice as much, but it gets more than twice the benefit: instead of one company producing results, three or four, maybe five do.
Why do you need huge acceleration and top speed? You're using your car for transport, not racing. There's no need for a car that goes more than 70mph. There's no need for a car that burns rubber.
I use a very old technology 1300cc car (probably equivalent in power to a more modern 1000 cc engine car). It has sufficient guts for my purposes, even when carrying 4 people + a load.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's very easy to see electricity as a viable alternative to oil based products for vehicle fuel. after all, electricity is clean, isn't it? Well not always. Granted an electric vehicle gives out no exhaust fumes, but we also need to consider how that electricity is made. The world is experiencing a considerable rise in the demand for electricity, and, despite all the hype, wind, solar, wave power etc can only fill a tiny propartion of that demand. Nuclear fuel is still unfashionable, so electricity generators are forced to look at hydro and fossil fuels (maily coal) to meet the demand. Hydro has its problems as it displaces peoples. In many parts of the develloping world, especially China and India coal is the major source of generating fuel. The burning of this coal creates horrendous amounts of acric pollution in many cities. So, electric cars can only be a long-term 'green' replacement for gasolean ones provided the world has a sufficient supply of 'clean' electricity: which it does not. We (the human race) need to have a complete mind change over, not just how we power our cars, but how we live our lives in general, and we must challenge our expectations of what we can reasonable expect from this planet of ours if we want it to remain somewhere worth living. Forget the car and take the bus - or walk!
Essentially we're getting 100mph for the transport, but the wanger extension is what is giving us 20mpg. People talk about safety etc, but really these are hedges against speaking the real reason; the perception that Real Men drive Hummers with gunracks, only faggots drive 1100cc Noddy cars.
I'm not quite buying your simplification, though, either: how do you account for the 59% of car purchases made by women? What's their issue, penis envy?
While it may be popular these days to try and pin all the country's (if not the entire world's) ills on a bunch of redneck, white, male, gun-toting, Hummer-driving, "flyover state"-ers, I don't think that reality backs that up. Your typical car buyer is female, and is looking for safety, performance (acceleration and handling, which in many people's minds is intertwined with safety), style, and somewhere significantly further down the list, environmental impact and fuel economy. While the guy driving a Hummer may make a nice target for ridicule, there aren't really enough of them to really matter compared to the legions of people driving mid-market cars which really don't have much in the way of a "penis factor" going for them.
Gas just doesn't cost enough for people to care more about mileage than about style. And to be honest, even if it went up by an order of magnitude, while you'd see cars become more efficient, I doubt that you'd really see people changing their fundamental views very much. We're not really talking about anything that's developed recently here; the same forces are at work today with cars, that led people a century or two ago to buy matched sets of horses to pull their coach. Two thousand years ago, there were probably Romans ogling each others' chariots -- when you have something that represents such a large investment (as personal transportation devices almost always are, regardless of the era), they almost automatically become status symbols.
If we ever get cars that on average get 100MPG, it'll be because the cost of fuel is $10 a gallon; even then, there will still be Hyundais and BMWs, econo-boxes and performance machines, minivans and maybe even a Hummer or two, because that's what people will want and have always wanted.
Given the choice between trying to change a deep-rooted social behavior and solving the technical problem of making a minivan/Hummer/whatever that gets 100MPG, I'd say the technical problem is far more feasible to solve.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I am stunned to learn the average American vehicle gets 21mpg, or 8.9 lt/100km.
Here people have decided that the supposed benefits of huge Galaxy-class land vessels are worth paying to refill every couple of days, because not only is there the long-standing male car culture here, but now women are using vehicles as a means of self-actualization, self-aggrandizement, self-empowerment, or whatever you want to call it.
We're perfectly willing to go for instant gratification rather than long-term sanity. Run up your credit cards, buy a Ford Annihilator, and have fun! It's the New American Way. Restraint is for pussies and foreigners.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Most SUVs, especially truck-based SUVs, are much less safe than normal passenger cars. A low center of gravity plus properly designed crumple zones to absorb energy will always fare better than a tall rigid design like an F150. Even better, smaller cars are more maneuverable, providing "active" safety (the ability to avoid an accident entirely) rather than "passive" safety (the ability to walk away from an accident). The only thing making SUVs "safer" than average passenger cars is that everybody bought into the BS that SUVs are "safer". It's become an arms race, and if you don't have a jacked up monster then you risk decapitation if a SUV hits you from the side.
Crowding has nothing to do with it. In fact, in a crowded situation a smaller care may be even safer because it gives you the ability to squeeze into smaller areas for avoidance that you wouldn't otherwise be able to.
That's exactly the point. Cars crumple to absorb energy that would otherwise transfer into your internal organs. Your best bet is to learn how to drive and avoid such situations in the first place. If you can't handle that, you really shouldn't have a license in the first place.
It's not mandates that make fuel efficiency a big selling point, it's the taxation of gasoline.
And once the US government figures out that taxing gasoline would be a great way to pay for the war on terror
There was also the Audi A2 1.2L TDI Diesel, which did 94MPG (that's Imperial gallons), and had a 0-60 of 12.6s, so not really that far out the envelope of the competition. Frankly it looks to be based on a mindset of Americans who have no idea what is currently possible outside the gas guzzelers they drive.
One of the big problems is that Americans insist on high torque engines at low revs.
Gasoline engines simply doesn't work that way. You end up with gas-guzzling five liter V8s.
Diesel does work that way. It'll double your gas mileage with no noticeable difference in the car.
No sig today...
We need better designed cities, not better designed cars.
Cars are certainly the most flexible way to get around. But we should not have to use them for our daily commute through rush hour traffic or even for running most common errands or to go out and play or dine out.
The problem really is with the way we (esp. the US) design cities. Instead of spending money on public transit-oriented communities, it's much, much cheaper for the municipalities to just pave a stretch of concrete and let individual citizens pay for the cost, maintenance, and operation of personally-owned vehicles. On top of that, condo construction here is pretty lousy, whereas if single family home construction is lousy at least your immediate neighbors are farther away from the noise.
Unfortunately, we don't really have a simple way to measure how much energy people can save in cities with alternative transit as opposed to people who live in cities where they have to drive even to the nearest postal mailbox.
In the mean time, the exciting progress in the transportation field ought to be things like transit oriented design:
http://www.transitorienteddevelopment.org/
http://www.carfree.com/
Progress in these areas of urban development will get us closer to constructing sustainable colonies in space than any improvement in individually run cars.
Actually, the X Prize is a monopoly breaker, in the space industry no one except NASA was developing space ship, because there is no market for it.
X Prize gave a market, a first initial client of X Million Dollars, this allow a higher ROI on initial years to expands and sell more units.
Same thing goes for the automotive industry, if you belive half of what the movie "who killed the electric car" then you would agree that the current automotive industry has no interest in changing its ways. in a oligopoly if everyone does almost the same thing, no one is pressured to create a more customer appealing product. its cheaper to spend a few million in advertising to make sure sales than spending billions on something that might not sell. (plus extra millions to shift consumers mind)
Actually, GM and FORD are playing catch up because Honda and Toyota broken off the rank and pushed hybrids. And they sell well, given a homeland boost in japan. being a smaller country than the USA it need to be more fuel efficient since it has less bargaining power on economy of scale (and gun power for the purist of the cause).
Anyhow, Automotive X Prize will give the auportunity for smalled researchers to invest upto half of the X Prize to win it. because a 50% ROI is still a good deal even if you don't sell any car. so in essence, the X Prize will allow new competitor to pressure even further the BIG car makers. that would be a few more RIA and Huydai eating up their market share. I mean, still neglectable, but X Prize will span at least 8 commercially viable solution. Thus 5 potential cash cow in the next 50 year to eat up the market.
A) current car maker will try to beat the prize before hand (which is not that far off, they can probably pull it off by 2008) most of them have hybrid car this year, the version two should be vastly enhanced with a few last minutes buck and if they each on their own pay their own X Prize. because in the end its to keep their pie.
B) Some X Prize will win, some Rich Millionnair will grab sponsor as a VC. and within 5 years new brands appears. mind you emerging marketing are starting to have their own local brands, thus the technology to work it up. guess what, this segment of the pie should be fairly big. and a lot of people will be willing to pay for the plants and cash out on a prepaid R&D.
C) the car manufacturer buys the technology and keep it shut or release it slowly. (which should not happen since the war on efficiency has started, Honda made the act of war on during the supper bowl ads, gm is pushing the wave vs the accent and the yaris... the trend is good, but a bit late because we are starting to fell the effect of global warming)
hey i mean its a amazing spring right now, and its gonna snow and frezzing rain again next week. last year there was snow in india. people think for now that global warming means hot temperature, but in reality it means shift of weather pattern. will be sad the day that all of America will be under ice.
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