Competitors start engines in $10M race for fuel efficiency

Monday, 04 June 2007

Source:wwww.Greenwire.com

The spoils in the century's highest-stakes auto race will go not the swift, but to the super fuel-efficient.

Waiting at the finish line is the Automotive X PRIZE: $10 million for the vehicle that gets at least 100 miles a gallon and meets tough air emissions requirements.

So -- engineering students, car companies and entrepreneurs -- start your clean-burning engines.

Though the nonprofit X PRIZE Foundation has not formally announced the competing teams yet, some have been working for months. And, while the $10 million purse is nice, they're motivated by more than cash.

"It's not so much the money, which obviously helps small companies, it's the recognition that we have a reliable car that's as important if not more important," said Jan-Olaf Willums, the chair and founder of the investment firm InSpire Invest, which is backing the Norwegian electric-car manufacturer Think in the X PRIZE race.

Think already has a two-seat electric car that can go 100 mpg, Willums said, but it must figure how to calculate the kilowatt hours of electricity it uses and translate them to miles per gallon. "If you generate [electricity] by hydropower, it emits no carbon," he said.

X PRIZE vehicles will compete in two categories: mainstream and alternative. Mainstream vehicles must accommodate four or more passengers and roll on four wheels. Alternative vehicles must carry at least two riders and have no wheel requirement.

Think -- whose 100 employees produced 1,000 electric cars last year -- plans to develop a four-seater next year.

Among the company's competitors in the mainstream category is a consortium of 20 universities -- including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hong Kong Polytechnic, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Polytechnico di Milano and Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi.

"We've spent 10 months building our team, finalizing agreements with our sponsors and working on core design," said Robyn Allen, an aerospace engineering major at MIT. The consortium's goal: a 200 mpg vehicle built from sustainable materials.

"Exceeding the miles per gallon equivalent is important, but equally important is the overall cost of the car, the amount of energy and fuel that go into manufacturing and also the eventual recycling," Allen said. "We're looking to have minimal toxicity ... over that whole life cycle."

To that end, the team is performing a comprehensive lifecycle analysis of each material, she added. Allen predicted it would take them a year to a year and a half to reach their goal.

Allen is also convinced students have an advantage over auto companies.

"Our effort is certainly cheaper," Allen said. "We're volunteer-based so we don't pay stipends and the majority of our budget goes to hardware." She also noted that students have no "historic brand identity" or "need to adhere to relationships between companies and vendors."

"We're just a not-for-profit research initiative run by students that are free to go in whichever direction we wish," she added.

'Time is right'

Neal Anderson, the Automotive X PRIZE's senior director, said some entrepreneurs or smaller organizations might have an advantage in "thinking outside the box" and "moving quickly." But he said larger companies have the advantage of resources, budget expertise and, in certain cases, manufacturing safety.

But, Anderson conceded, the winner could come from anywhere.

"It will be more difficult for an individual garage mechanic to compete by designing a production-capable vehicle," Anderson said. "They'll need more resources and need to partner with folks who have experience in areas they are missing, but it's certainly doable."

With so many minds focusing on fuel-efficiency, Anderson predicted the foundation's goal of fostering breakthroughs in space and technology will be achieved quickly.

Since contest guidelines were released at the New York Auto Show in early April, X PRIZE has received over 250 requests to join the competition. Those requests run the gamut from "universities to mid-tier companies to well-funded start-ups to large manufacturers," Anderson said.

Part of the positive reaction is a result of the foundation's timing, he added.

The X PRIZE Foundation was also responsible for the competition that led to the successful launch of the first private space craft in 2004 by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was led by Burt Ratan and Paul Allen. And in October 2006, the organization initiated the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics for the first team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days. That goal has not yet been reached.

The foundation anticipates awarding the Automotive X PRIZE in 2009.

"A number of forces are dictating that the time is right," Anderson said. "The technology exists today to see a super-efficient vehicle on the market ... and the public is increasingly aware of the problems facing our society, whether it's from the perspective of global energy security or it's the pain at the pump they are feeling on a day-to-day basis."

He added, "We really believe the industry is ripe for change."

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