Entries in the X Prize technology class might be permitted tandem
seating to help reduce aerodynamic drag, as in this concept car from
Rinspeed. Plastic body panels also trim weight but face obvious safety
hurdles. (Photo courtesy of Rinspeed)

 

Does This Mean Zero to 60 mph in 3 Minutes?

By Dan Carney, Contributor Email

Date posted: 05-20-2007

Competition has a way of bringing out the best in people. If there is a gauntlet that you think needs picking up, start by throwing it down. The Automotive X Prize has done just that.

In 1919, hotelier Raymond Orteig offered a $25,000 prize for the first nonstop solo flight from New York to Paris, a challenge ultimately met by Charles Lindbergh in 1927. Within months of the flight, aircraft and airfield construction boomed in the U.S.

We're reminded of this by Mark Goodstein, executive director of the Automotive X Prize. This group plans to award a multimillion-dollar purse to teams that win a series of races in a production-ready vehicle capable of exceeding 100 mpg. The X Prize people hope that a boom in practical, high-mileage cars will surely follow.

The real question might be whether it is possible to build a winning entry for less money than the prize.

In This Contest, 100 mpg Is the Easy Part
The first X Prize was announced in 1995, a $10 million award to the first non-governmental organization to achieve space flight in a reusable craft. It was won on October 4, 2004, by SpaceShipOne, built by Mojave Aerospace Ventures. Now the X Prize group has focused its attention on the need for mainstream, mass-produced cars capable of extraordinary fuel mileage.

While it isn't terribly hard to build a vehicle that will propel itself 100 miles on only a gallon of gas, the X Prize rules call for a car that can carry four adults and sip gas while traversing all kinds of terrain and negotiating real-world traffic. And the car builder must demonstrate that the vehicle can be profitably offered for sale in volumes of 10,000 units in a form that meets federal crash safety and emissions requirements. If this weren't enough, the competition really is a race, because the money goes to the fastest car that can do all of these things.

"Achieving 100 mpg? Any bright engineer can go do that," declares Chris Theodore, vice chairman of ASC Inc., who advised the X Prize committee. "But with the rules of cost and safety and desirability and functionality, it becomes much more challenging. I'm not sure the public appreciates how difficult it is."

That much is certain, if the X Prize group's own survey is accurate. The contest organizers conducted a poll and found that 52 percent of Americans believe there is a conspiracy between car manufacturers and oil companies to deprive consumers of technologies that produce high fuel economy.

No souped-up Prius with extra batteries is going to be successful in this contest, says S.M. Shahed, senior research fellow at Honeywell Turbo Technologies. "It will require a huge weight reduction," he notes. "You can't simply add more heavy batteries."

Maintaining safety in lightweight cars will be a challenge, Shahed acknowledges. But it can be met by having the car sacrifice itself to protect the occupants at a lower crash speed than is typical today. "If the price you have to pay for having a 100-mpg car is totaling the car at 25 mph, then I'm willing to pay that price," he says.

Take Your Pick: Four Seats or Two
The contest features two separate categories, with most of the spoils going to a production-ready, four-passenger vehicle. The X Prize group is also sanctioning an alternate category for non-production-ready machines in the hopes of encouraging a bit more creativity. This category's less-stringent requirements will also lower the barrier to entry for less well-funded teams.

The mainstream class demands space for four adults and 10 cubic feet of cargo space, acceleration to 60 mph in 12 seconds or less, a top speed of 100 mph, a minimum cruising range of 200 miles and customer-friendly features such as air-conditioning and a stereo.

The alternative class requires only two seats, a top speed of 80 mph and an effective cruising range of 100 miles. A requirement that the occupants ride side by side is being debated and might ultimately be discarded, says Goodstein, and this would permit more aerodynamic tandem seating.

The cars must be something that American drivers will be willing to buy, points out Spencer Quong, senior vehicles analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists and another X Prize advisor. "Part of the competition is to make sure the vehicles do appeal to consumers," he says, "so you are not going to get a vehicle that goes from zero to 60 mph in 3 minutes."

In the view of X Prize organizers, the know-how already exists to build a 100-mpg production car. But if the teams that pursue the Automotive X Prize succeed in pioneering new technologies and techniques, then the supply base for true high-volume production of such cars can be established.

"It is hard to imagine an entry being done for less than a million dollars, and the sky is the limit for how much it would cost to win the thing," says ASC's Theodore, a former engineering executive at Chrysler and Ford. If a major corporate sponsor bankrolled a team that was determined to win, Theodore says, "it could be $100 million."

Millions in Cash Prizes!
The proposed X Prize rules have been released for comment, and the final rules will probably be published this summer. Teams that enter the contest will present their designs for review in mid-2008.

Judges will take a hard look at optimistic numbers and throw out the dreamers, predicts Theodore. "Somebody will say, 'We are using unobtainium, but when we get into production, economies of scale will bring down the cost to less than that of compacted dirt,'" he chuckles. "That is what we are trying to screen out."

Those teams whose cars are deemed viable will build their machines to contest the qualifying race in early 2009. To survive that round, entries must achieve 75 mpg (or the equivalent in some other form of energy, designated MPGe) and low emissions.

The qualifying race winners in the mainstream and alternative classes will split a cash prize (no amount has been set, but we've heard $25 million), with the winning mainstream team getting 75 percent of the booty and the alternative team getting the remaining 25 percent.

Top finishers from the qualifying race will advance to the final race in mid-2009. This event will require 100 MPGe and will be conducted over thousands of miles across the country, with varying conditions and even the use of non-team drivers, with possibly average citizens and even journalists taking turns at the wheel.

The winner will be the car that meets all of the minimum requirements and finishes the race in the least time. Again, the mainstream class gets triple the cash of the alternative class.

Gasoline, Plus Every Flavor of Alternative Fuel
Fuel economy will be calculated according to the equivalent amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline. Diesel-powered entries, for example, would have to get 113 mpg, because diesel contains more energy in each gallon than gasoline. Ethanol, on the other hand, has less energy per gallon and cars running on this fuel would only need to score 66 mpg to meet the 100-MPGe requirement.

The X Prize group will also calculate efficiencies for natural gas, electricity and other fuels based on a model developed by the Argonne National Laboratory. All entrants must use fuel supplied by the organizers, and hydrogen fuel is not planned to be one of them, because there is no current national infrastructure for the delivery of such fuel.

Adherents of each fuel will probably complain that the playing field is slanted in favor of other competitors, concedes Goodstein. All of the energy going into the car counts, so plug-in hybrids have to count both liquid fuel and the electrical energy obtained from the power grid.

Scientists or Crackpots?
Who will enter the Automotive X Prize contest? That is the question that remains to be answered. University teams with manufacturer backing, like those that entered the DARPA Grand Challenge in recent years, would seem a good bet. But the X Prize contest will be a much tougher test and might be too much for such teams, cautions Goodstein.

Traditional manufacturers are contemplating entries, but none have publicly committed to compete yet. Small companies like electric sports-car constructor Tesla seem like a good bet. High-tech and electronics companies might also enter, with the intent of proving that carmakers are behind the times.

The difficulty of the contest has caused no lack of confidence among would-be entrants. "The number of competitors who have written us to say, 'I've already won, just make the check out to me,' is large," Goodstein says.

The type of team, the sort of fuel and all the other details of the eventual winning efforts remain to be seen. But one thing is certain: The winning cars will not use "fuel molecule aligners," "air vortex generators," "fish carburetors" or any of the other mythical and fraudulent add-on devices claimed to produce fantastic fuel economy. Of course, this will prove to conspiracy theorists that there's still a nefarious conspiracy between Detroit and Big Oil.

 

Series hybrid electric cars like the Chevrolet Volt concept may be able
to complete some portions of the contest while running only on power
from batteries. This electricity counts in the fuel-consumption
calculations, but it is more efficient than the internal combustion
engine. (Photo courtesy of General Motors Corporation)

The General Motors Precept concept car, built to fulfill GM's portion
of the U.S. Government Partnership for the Next Generation of Vehicles,
achieved an aerodynamic drag coefficient of only 0.163 — the lowest
ever recorded at the time for a five-passenger, four-door sedan. The
Precept achieved nearly 80 mpg using a 54-horsepower, 1.3-liter
three-cylinder turbocharged diesel matched to a 35 kW electric motor.
(Photo courtesy of General Motors Corporation)

The Ford Prodigy, which runs on compressed natural gas, uses active
aerodynamic devices such as a suspension that lowers the car at highway
speeds and grille shutters that close off air intake whenever possible
to achieve a Cd of 0.199. With a 74-hp 1.2-liter four-cylinder engine,
the Prodigy achieved 70 mpg. (Photo courtesy of Ford Motor Company)

BMW, DaimlerChrysler and General Motors are collaborating on two-mode
hybrid transmissions, which promise to permit smaller electric motors
and battery packs, a key development required to permit the mass
production of more vehicles with electric drivetrains. (Photo courtesy
of DaimlerChrysler AG)

 

The
VW EcoRacer concept car shows that light weight and sleek aerodynamics
could happily combine efficiency and performance. VW claims 60 mpg and
acceleration to 60 mph in 6.3 seconds with a 134-hp 1.5-liter
four-cylinder turbodiesel thanks to a curb weight of only 1,870 pounds.
(Photo courtesy of Volkswagen of America, Inc.)

 

The 2008 Highlander Hybrid lets the driver select "econ" mode, during
which the computer intervenes to prevent lead-footed drivers from
wasting gas with brief surges of full throttle. Successful X Prize
competitors will need to be vigilant at all times against such
fuel-thirsty bursts by drivers in the competition. (Photo courtesy of
Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.)