Early Contenders for the Automotive X-Prize

longacre writes "With the official entry period for the $10 million Automotive X-Prize contest just around the corner, Popular Mechanics offers a preview of the most promising entries. Among the 100-mpg vehicles that Detroit (and Japan) have claimed impossible to build comes a hybrid designed by a class of inner-city high school students in West Philadelphia. Also displayed is a futuristic-looking electric model with a range of 300 miles. We discussed the beginning of this contest earlier this year."

Comments

Love the snark... not

[jmorris42]

> Among the 100-mpg vehicles that Detroit (and Japan) have claimed impossible to build...

I know it is fun to rip on 'evil' corporations and all, but there is a bit of difference between some glorified go-cart some kids cobble together and what will pass the Dept of Transportation crash tests. Detroit and Tokyo live in the world where trial lawyers will rip ya a fresh asshole if a jury can be convinced your design wasn't 'perfectly safe.'

Re:Still

[Rei]

There are reasons that the Aptera has three wheels and not four, and they are entirely regulatory and not technical.

Actually, there are good technical reasons, too. Three wheelers are lighter, cheaper to build, and have less drag (and weight and drag reductions correspond to battery reductions, which further makes the vehicle lighter and cheaper). As for the regulations, safety regs are just one kind (again, since they're doing crash testing voluntarily, what's the problem?). There's also emissions regs (irrelevant to the Aptera) and lots of real world driving requirements (something that customers are lining up around the block to take care of for them ;) They're starting in low production rates from reservation only, so most people will have a lot of real-world driving behind them before they buy. Also, they've driven the prototypes a lot, and will have test drives starting this summer), as well as a ton of paperwork and delays.

I have little reason to disbelieve auto manufacturers when they say it is impossible to build a 100 MPH automobile, according to the legal definition of automobile.

Loremo meets the legal definition of an automobile. It's tiny, mind you, and a good example of why a definition based on the number of wheels is a stupid standard.