New X-Prize for Fuel Efficient Cars Announced

miowpurr writes "A new X-Prize for ultra fuel efficient cars has been announced. The winning car must 'carry four or more passengers and have climate control, an audio system and 10 cubic feet of cargo space. They also must have four or more wheels, hit 60 miles per hour in less than 12 seconds and have a minimum top speed of 100 miles per hour and a range of 200 miles. Those that qualify will race their vehicles in cross-country races in 2009 and 2010 that will combine speed, distance, urban driving and overall performance.'"

Comments

Car Must Be 100 MPG+

[Zabu]

Not mentioned in the summary.

Re:Car Must Be 100 MPG+

[Tyndmyr]

Also not mentioned...10Mil prize. Not bad at all, though I suspect that if a car that efficient could be designed for that price, it probably already would exist. Also, the prize is split between "mainstream" and "alternative" cars. The above restriction was for the mainstream category, which I imagine will be acheived later.

MPG?

[truthsearch]

carry four or more passengers and have climate control, an audio system and 10 cubic feet of cargo space. They also must have four or more wheels, hit 60 miles per hour in less than 12 seconds and have a minimum top speed of 100 miles per hour and a range of 200 miles.

My car does that now. The summary left out the most important piece of information: the car must get 100 MPG or more.

Re:No Batteries Allowed

[MyNymWasTaken]

http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/auto/prize-details/draft-guidelines

Fuel economy (energy efficiency): at least 100 Miles per gallon of gasoline energy equivalent (Mpge)

Vehicles must use AXP-supplied fuel during performance tests and races. A limited number of representative fuels will be provided. This will neutralize fuel gaming, and allow us to focus on viable fuels that are available in the marketplace to a level of our satisfaction. At this point, we expect to provide gasoline, diesel, electricity, natural gas, bio-diesel, and E85

water 4 gas

[xj]

Well conservation of energy for one. The energy required to split water in to hydrogen and oxygen is greater than the energy you get from burning it otherwise we'd all have perpetual motion machines running in our back yard.

Flow rate.
Say an engine has a displacement of 3 liters and is operating at 2000 rpm.
3 liters * 2000 rpm /2 (as this is a 4 stroke engine) * .85 (assume this is not turbo charged so the cylinder is never completely full) = 2550 liters of air per min.

the electric power required to electrolyze the hydrogen equivalent to 1 gallon of gasoline is equal to (500 moles) x (0.06587 kWh/mole) = 32.935 kWh, and the approximate cost of that power = (32.935 kWh)
credit to this site http://www.stardrivedevice.com/electrolysis.html

How much current can you alternator put out? Maybe 100 amps. How much hydrogen could your car generate per min? How much power can your alternator produce 100A *13.7V 1.37 KW

How much hydrogen could your car produce per min?
1.37 * (.06587 kWh/mole) / 60min/hr * 22.4 liters/mol = 0.033 liters of hydrogen per min
Compare this to the number above for the volume of air entering the engine.

How much hydrogen would one need to run a vehicle?

If 500 mol of hydrogen = 1 gallon of gasoline
If the vehicle gets 30 mpg at 60 mph = 2 gallons of gasoline per hr or 1000 mol of hydrogen per hr * 22.4 liters / mol / 60 min / hr = 373 lites per min of hydrogen

Compare this to the number above.
If anything all those hydrogen generator scams are going to do is create a vacuum leak that will turn on your check engine light.

Re:100 MPH?

[MobyDisk]

The Government, well ours in the UK anyway, have been doing a great job trying to make people think that speed is somehow inherently dangerous. Heads up folks ... it isn't! I'm glad that is your opinion, but the statistics seem to disagree with that statement and show that severity and likelihood of accidents is directly proportional to speed.