The Race is On: Build a 100 mpg Car, Win $10 Million

Editor

The X Prize Foundation and Progressive Insurance jointly announced at the New York Auto Show a new competition that will award a cool 10 million to the winner of a competition to design and build a 100+ mpg vehicle. These won’t be any hokey backyard Gyro Gearloose projects either: participating teams are required to build market-friendly gas-sippers that mainstream consumers can be expected to consider purchasing. Full details and a list of the teams that have entered so far are available at CNN; details on how to enter your own team for the Automotive X Prize can be had at the Foundation’s website.

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Posted at 8:59 pm in Automotive X Prize, Green, Jen Dunnaway, Project Cars

Comments

GTwildfire
Mar 24, 2008 at 1:49 am

Not backwards. It’s a delta-configured 3 wheeler.

Bunk
Mar 22, 2008 at 5:14 am

Subliminalmobile… Isn’t it aimed the wrong direction?

GTwildfire
Mar 21, 2008 at 12:58 am

Even if (more likely when) design teams are successful, Major auto makers WILL NOT take the ball and run with it. It’s a simple fact of life that had become very, very apparent. Major auto companies design what they will, regardless of outside developments that best their own efforts as if they don’t exist.
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Tell me I’m wrong and give examples.

retroman
Mar 20, 2008 at 10:30 pm

This approach might not be the most friendly to those who appreciate the bloated land yahts out LEVs are becoming, but we coulda had 100mpg several years ago. Problem is politics. We need to cut the size and weight of the average car down. Economy cars today weigh like twice as much as they did a decade ago. My ’93 Dodge Spirit weighs 3000lbs and my friends Shadow of the same year weighs about 2500. I dont have the exact figures but I’d have to say a current 2dr Civic must weigh 3500 and the hybrid must weigh more. It gets the same mpg as a 1986 Civic. I’m not talking magic carburetors or anything outlandish, but if we just take the technology we have, I’m sure we could bury the CAFE laws. Lighten the cars, use smaller forced induction engines (same hp, better mpg). I think water injection should be an option too along with HHO boosters. Those are proven methods to increase efficiency.