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."

Go Aptera!

[Rei]

I'm cheering for Aptera [apteraforum.com] not just because I'm in line to buy one (indirectly, through a California intermediary), but because technologically, they really deserve it. A drag coefficient of only 0.11 (Prius=0.26), combined with a low cross-sectional area -- i.e., they let physics dictate the shape. Speaking of the shape, it's an inverted wing, so more downforce the faster it goes. That, combined with a wide (~7 foot) front wheelbase and low-mounted batteries for a low CG, lead to strong stability against rollovers. The design is a tadpole trike [autospeed.com] for stability, weight reduction, and drag reduction. Long 45" crumple/deflection zone, in-seatbelt airbags, with roof and door crush strengths double the NTSB standard. Composite construction for light weight and safety (stronger than steel). Lithium phosphate batteries, which should last the life of the vehicle. The ridiculously low drag and rather light weight approach allows them to use only 10kWh of batteries, meaning faster charges, charges on only wall current, lower potential maintenance/repair costs, and a whole host of other benefits (uses only 80Wh/mi @ 55mph, 140Wh/mi @ 85mph). I could go on for hours; it's an impressive piece of work. I'm simply not as impressed by the other contenders.

Oh, and they recently brought on the head of production for the Ford GT, Dodge Viper, and half a dozen other high end cars to head up their manufacturing. First cars go out the door this December; mine should be late next summer. Can't wait!

Re:Plug-in hybrid with lion batteries?

[Rei]

R/C helicopters nowadays are switching over more and more from li-poly to lithium phosphate. Tesla uses neither -- they use laptop cells. These can catch fire from being punctured. The electrolyte in lithium phosphate cells is usually still mildly flammable, but they don't have the runaway heating risks that conventional laptop cells (LiCoO2+graphite) usually do; it'd be quite the challenge to make a lithium phosphate cell burn by charging it wrong. Lithium phosphate and other stable li-ion chemistries (titanates, spinels, etc) are steadily becoming the new standard for EVs. You don't have as high of an energy density, but the lifespan and safety benefits more than make up for it. Also, in mass production, they should be a lot cheaper, since their raw ingredients are all dirt cheap.

Of course, battery tech is advancing so fast, who knows what will be the standard in five years. It's amazing how fast things are moving.

Re:Go Aptera! - NOT

[Rei]

[quote]What do ya think you will do with that car? This is the question I have for most of these exotic vehicles.[/quote]

Commite, shop, and all of the stuff I normally do with a car except for long trips**. Duh. :)

[quote]Based on their own numbers you get a 120 mile distance to dead so you wouldn't want to get more than forty or fifty miles afrom home[/quote]

Depends on whether there's merely a normal household power socket on the other end, but let's go with that. So?

[quote]and that is going to be with the climate control off.[/quote]

Small car, efficient heat pump, solar-powered climate assist. Sure, it'll impact range, but probably not as much as you're picturing. Also, there's no initial cooling load, as it has a solar-powered vent fan that keeps the car just above ambient temperature when you're not in it and it's out in the sun.

[quoteFrom their webpage it looks like you can get a hybrid drive as an option but they don't have any details as to how much cargo space you sacrifice for the gas engine/generator.[/quote]

None. The generator displaces 2/3rds of the batteries; it has a shorter electric range, but the 5-gallon gas tank gives it a range of 600-700 miles.

The Aptera has 15.9 cubic feet of cargo space.

[quote]Lets run the numbers. Assume a commute that runs 35 miles, 70 both ways. On a good econobox you can get 35mpg so it works out to two gallons per day or assuming gas hits $5/gal you pay $10/day for gas. Average of about twenty work days per month and ya get $200 for gas to commute. Now compute the difference in the monthly note for the econobox and the savings on the light bill from not plugging in every night and gulping down a few KWH (remember it takes more than 10KWH to charge a 10KWH battery) and it's probably a wash. If your commute is less the economics get worse pretty fast.[/quote]

I find it funny that you said "let's run the numbers" and then didn't actually run the numbers. That's pretty amusing. :) Let's *actually* run the numbers.

Econobox: $13k, +$2k in taxes, -0k deductions.
Aptera: $27k, +3k in taxes, and let's assume that deductions roughly cancel out taxes (could be a lot more, but let's be pessimistic).

Price difference: $14k

$10/day = $3650/year
Aptera goes 120mi on 10kWh = 80Wh/mi (0.08kWh/mi). Charging is usually ~93% efficient, but let's be pessimstic and say that it raises power consumption to 0.09kWh/mi. I pay $0.05/kWh, but the average in the US is more like $0.10/kWh, so let's go with that. That's 4/5th of a cent per mile. * 70 miles, * 365.24 days, that's $230/year.
Net savings: $3420/year. Time to pay off the difference: 4 years.

See what happens when you *actually* do the math? Electricity is dirt cheap, and the Aptera uses very little of it.

There's also maintenance, but when you consider that a good lithium phosphate pack should last the life of the car, and even if you had to replace it, by the time you had to replace it, LiP should cost under $0.20/kWh, you're only looking at a couple thousand dollars thanks to the small pack size (thanks to the efficiency). I.e., it'd cost far less than you save by eliminating 90% of the moving parts in the drivetrain compared to a normal gasoline car. It doesn't even have a transmission, let alone all of the breakable parts of an ICE. So the payback time is even sooner.

Still

[pavon]

There are reasons that the Aptera has three wheels and not four, and they are entirely regulatory and not technical. Part of that is just the red tape required to prove that the car meets the requirements, but not even Aptera claims that they meet or exceed all the government requirements for passenger vehicles, just the ones they considered most important for safety.

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. Not that it matters to me at all whether the vehicle I buy is technically classified as an automobile or not.

Re:Plug-in hybrid with lion batteries?

[Rei]

Great. That's *one type of cell* with *one specific chemistry* (and, by the way, just last week there was an announcement that one company got them up to 180Wh/kg, over the standard 160Wh/kg; I could dig it up for you). Let's look at other chemistries. Lithium phospate cells didn't even exist in the 90s. In 2001, A123 started pushing for the tech, and by 2005, they were in power tools, and today, there are about a dozen different EVs being developed around them (and they may well become standard in regular hybrids, too). That is *fast*. Titanates were the same way (and to a lesser degree, spinels). Now there's Toshiba's SCiB, which I believe is now on the market -- not sure of the chemistry, but it's another li-ion variant that doesn't lose much charge density (~20% or so) to gain stability. Now Argonne is contracting for its layered cathodes, which provide stability *and* ~40% more energy density than LiCoO2 cells. And in various stages of development, there is Hybrid Technoloogies' "superlattice" cathode, lithium vanadium oxide anodes (already used in Subaru's G4e prototype), tin nanoparticle anodes, silicon nanoparticle/carbon nanotube anodes, silicon nanowire anodes, as well as major advances in ultracapactors, lithium sulphur batteries, sodium ion batteries, and about a dozen others.

Remember cell phones in the early 90s? Remember the giant bricks? That's largely advancing battery tech for you.

Re:Love the snark... not

[maddskillz]

Did you RTFA? The car the kids "cobbled" together looks pretty impressive to me. It's hardly a go-kart, at 2500 lbs. Maybe lighter then a normal car, but not outside the realm of possibilty. They just took an already excellent engine (VW TDI) and added hybrid technology, then ran it off biodiesel.
I wish we had projects 1/10th as interesting when I was in high school

Re:How about...

[Rei]

It DOES NOT have AC, it has a heat pump.

Hey, genius: an AC *is* a heat pump [wikipedia.org]. What we colloquially refer to a "heat pump" is the same thing as an AC, except it can run in the other direction for heating as well (more accurately, it's a "reversible cycle heat pump"). Reversible cycle heat pumps are no less efficient at cooling than ones that can do cooling only.