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."

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:Go Aptera!

[gad_zuki!]

Im cheering for some light rail in America. Seriously, Im sick of the solution being ANYTHING but building some decent public trans. Yes, Im aware that the US is a large place, but the US is a country of cities and there's no need to connect them. So why dont we have intra-city light rail? Well, we do but car ownership kills it anywhere there might be parking.

Perhaps its time to start putting train and trollies back into our cities.

Re:One thing that bothers me....

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent would be on file with USPTO, and probably expired by now (patents are only exclusive for 20 years). Go ahead and use it.

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.

Re:Little problem..

[Hucko]

Except, car ownership is increasing, family sizes are decreasing(at least in western cultures -- and they are putting pressure on the rest of the world to do the same). They are buying cars for every occassion except effectiveness anyway; people are moving closer to schools despite still driving them those 2 - 5 blocks (Australian experience warning), and public buses are being run empty. I have no problem with people buy the most practical for their families purposes, but having 3 prestige vehicles needs to be peer pressured out of existence. Admittedly, owning a 100mpg vehicle could be simply that.

Re:Not that I don't believe you, but ...

[hardburn]

We can verify your story if we have a patent number. There's a lot of people who have a story like this, who say the technology was patented and bought up by some big oil company. Yet somehow, a specific, easily accessible, and easily verifiable patent number never materializes.

If I'm understanding the idea correctly, a fuel injector should be able to atomize the fuel just as well. Yet somehow, while we've seen big efficiency gains with injectors, they're not that big, even if we cut off the cat.

rail

[loshwomp]

You know, there's some light rail just south of me in San Jose. I've tried it and I wasn't impressed.

You're making the classic mistake of basing your judgment on the poor rail implementations we have here in the states. If you want to make a fair evaluation of rail, visit a country where it's done well.

Re:So we have 100MPG cars but...

[King_TJ]

As a rule of thumb, I take any "extreme" environmental "issue" with a large serving of salt.

EG. Your example of the "energy-efficient bulbs". It's an extreme over-reaction to claim you might need HAZMAT to visit your house because you broke one! In reality, the amount of mercury contained in one is VERY small. Previous generations absorbed FAR more mercury into their bodies doing things like handling/playing with little balls of the stuff in science classes! Playing the "game" of trying to tally up "environmental damage" caused by obtaining the raw materials used in the product is bogus, too. Why? Because you can string those arguments out as far as you'd like to, in any direction, to argue your point. (Do you happen to have all the financial details on overall environmental impact for locating and refining tungsten filaments for traditional incandescent bulbs, or for the power used to generate the near-vacuums required for each and every bulb produced?)

"Green" businesses amount to little more than "feel good" marketing.... (I think we may pretty much agree on that point.) But all I'm saying is, consumers will ALWAYS be best served if they concern themselves with what the best overall VALUE is for their dollar, on each item they purchase. The idea of spending more to be a "good environmental citizen" is foolish - since in the vast majority of cases, we can't really show that a mass purchase of the "green" item really accomplishes that goal.