New X-Prize for Fuel Efficient Cars Announced

miowpurr writes "A new X-Prize for ultra fuel efficient cars has been announced. The winning car must 'carry four or more passengers and have climate control, an audio system and 10 cubic feet of cargo space. They also must have four or more wheels, hit 60 miles per hour in less than 12 seconds and have a minimum top speed of 100 miles per hour and a range of 200 miles. Those that qualify will race their vehicles in cross-country races in 2009 and 2010 that will combine speed, distance, urban driving and overall performance.'"

Car Must Be 100 MPG+

[Zabu]

Not mentioned in the summary.

MPG?

[truthsearch]

carry four or more passengers and have climate control, an audio system and 10 cubic feet of cargo space. They also must have four or more wheels, hit 60 miles per hour in less than 12 seconds and have a minimum top speed of 100 miles per hour and a range of 200 miles.

My car does that now. The summary left out the most important piece of information: the car must get 100 MPG or more.

100-mpg vehicle !

[Eric Pierce]

The summary fails to mention that the goal is a 100-mpg vehicle! Kind of need that in the summary or the TITLE.

ER

Water4gas Scam Reviewed

[bihoy]

Is Water4gas a scam or does it increase your mpg using cutting edge techniques?
A Certified Master Mechanics review of the water4gas system.

http://www.auto-facts.org/water4gas-scam.html [auto-facts.org]

Re:Why 100 mph minimum speed?

[427_ci_505]

Sometimes you need acceleration, even at relatively high speeds.
For that you need power.

More power increases the top speed.

Draft Guidelines

[ryanguill]

Draft Guidelines can be found here: http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/auto/prize-details/draft-guidelines [progressiv...xprize.org] [PDF Warning]

Re:Car Must Be 100 MPG+

[Tyndmyr]

Also not mentioned...10Mil prize. Not bad at all, though I suspect that if a car that efficient could be designed for that price, it probably already would exist. Also, the prize is split between "mainstream" and "alternative" cars. The above restriction was for the mainstream category, which I imagine will be acheived later.

Re:No Batteries Allowed

[MyNymWasTaken]

http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/auto/prize-details/draft-guidelines [progressiv...xprize.org]

Fuel economy (energy efficiency): at least 100 Miles per gallon of gasoline energy equivalent (Mpge)

Vehicles must use AXP-supplied fuel during performance tests and races. A limited number of representative fuels will be provided. This will neutralize fuel gaming, and allow us to focus on viable fuels that are available in the marketplace to a level of our satisfaction. At this point, we expect to provide gasoline, diesel, electricity, natural gas, bio-diesel, and E85

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X Prize Cars

[EricBoyd]

I've been chronicling the Automotive X Prize for months over at X Prize Cars [xprizecars.com]. At X Prize Cars you can read about the various teams, Compare many of them side-by-side [xprizecars.com], and follow the news. The most impressive are of course the Tesla [xprizecars.com], Aptera [xprizecars.com], and the FuelVapor Technologies [xprizecars.com], which is actually on exhibit here at the New York Auto Show. But many other teams have cool cars as well - and it's still early, the official entry process is due to be announced today! Also, if you're curious about the rules, I have a handy AXP rules summary [xprizecars.com] page.

Re:Less exciting

[OnlineAlias]

The Tesla doesn't have 4 seats or the cargo capacity, so it is out from the start.

Rule summary

[Thelasko]

Here is a brief summary of the rules as taken from the draft on X-Prise website. [xprize.org]
Fuel economy >100MPGe
4+ passengers
Must meet US EPA Tier II bin 5
Must meet US safety regulations
Must have features considered standard in today's automobiles at a cost that is not prohibitively expensive, and must provide a business case proving so.

water 4 gas

[xj]

Well conservation of energy for one. The energy required to split water in to hydrogen and oxygen is greater than the energy you get from burning it otherwise we'd all have perpetual motion machines running in our back yard.

Flow rate.
Say an engine has a displacement of 3 liters and is operating at 2000 rpm.
3 liters * 2000 rpm /2 (as this is a 4 stroke engine) * .85 (assume this is not turbo charged so the cylinder is never completely full) = 2550 liters of air per min.

the electric power required to electrolyze the hydrogen equivalent to 1 gallon of gasoline is equal to (500 moles) x (0.06587 kWh/mole) = 32.935 kWh, and the approximate cost of that power = (32.935 kWh)
credit to this site http://www.stardrivedevice.com/electrolysis.html [stardrivedevice.com]

How much current can you alternator put out? Maybe 100 amps. How much hydrogen could your car generate per min? How much power can your alternator produce 100A *13.7V 1.37 KW

How much hydrogen could your car produce per min?
1.37 * (.06587 kWh/mole) / 60min/hr * 22.4 liters/mol = 0.033 liters of hydrogen per min
Compare this to the number above for the volume of air entering the engine.

How much hydrogen would one need to run a vehicle?

If 500 mol of hydrogen = 1 gallon of gasoline
If the vehicle gets 30 mpg at 60 mph = 2 gallons of gasoline per hr or 1000 mol of hydrogen per hr * 22.4 liters / mol / 60 min / hr = 373 lites per min of hydrogen

Compare this to the number above.
If anything all those hydrogen generator scams are going to do is create a vacuum leak that will turn on your check engine light.

Re:100 MPH?

[FatAlb3rt]

That was Montana from 1995-1999 [us-highways.com].

Re:realistic specs??

[EvanED]

And more importantly, why do they require a minimum top speed of 100 MPH? 80 MPH would be more than sufficient for 99.99% of roads worldwide. I'd be happy with 100 MPG even if I could never get it over 75 MPH.

As others have said, you want to be able to go 70 when going uphill too. One of my friends had an old junker when we were undergrads that could easily maintain highway speeds on flat roads (we were definitely in the 70s at times) but whenever she would come back to school, approaching the town you have to go over a ridge in the Appalachians. She could hit the bottom of the ridge going 70, keep the pedal floored, and be going 45 or 50 at the top. This isn't some back road either; it's the main route into PSU from the south-east, and is a four-lane segment of US-322.

Requiring 100 mph is probably a simple way of trying to prevent something like that from happening.

Re:100 MPH?

[MobyDisk]

The Government, well ours in the UK anyway, have been doing a great job trying to make people think that speed is somehow inherently dangerous. Heads up folks ... it isn't!

I'm glad that is your opinion, but the statistics [tfhrc.gov] seem to disagree [fairtrafficlaws.com] with that statement [nap.edu] and show that severity and likelihood of accidents is directly proportional to speed [sciencedirect.com].

Re:Less exciting

[Anonymous Coward]

The White Star is not the Tesla Roadster, it's a family vehicle from Tesla Motors (think electric minivan)... That one will fit the passenger and cargo requirement.

Re:More practical than other X prizes

[diGitalRchitect]

I don't think there is much likelihood that this prize will have any major impact on an environmental level. Addressing fuel economy globally is not at all about creating the most efficient technology. It will be about creating the most mass producible solution. The best solution will be the one that relies on the most abundant resources.

We see contention now in the number of hybrid electric vehicles that can be produced, because they all depend on a limited supply of some common parts. The more Prius vehicles produced means the fewer HEVs that can be produced by other manufacturers. Doesn't the Tesla run on something like 100 laptop batteries. That means that for each one, 100 fewer laptops can be produced. One factory produces seemless containment units for nuclear reactors. They produce 8 a year. That means that only 8 reactors based on that technology can be opened each year. Wind power is more viable solution for global impact because the materials for turbines are easily acquired, even if the power source is unreliable.

I suspect that this will produce a nice pet project for enthusiasts, but not one that will have a large impact.

Re:realistic specs??

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it's motor/power. My truck has a weak 350 Chevy TBI engine, it has no problem on its own, but when hauling 5500 lbs of trailer behind it, it struggles to go up steep hills. I'll have the pedal on the floor and struggle to get 55-60 MPH on some steep bridges (think I 10 in west Louisiana). Truck has a perfectly functional 4L80E transmission (4-speed automatic reasonably heavy duty), so it's definitely not the trans.

I've experienced similar with old UHaul vans. I had one of the large ones (with a manual transmission) that was downright scary on the interstate. I'd have it floored going down hill just to be able to crest the next hill at 55 mph. On a 70 MPH interstate, that's just no fun.

Re:Less exciting

[Bruiser80]

Link is deceptive. Made my Firefox window shuck and jive like it was the 4th of July :-)

Re:More practical than other X prizes

[Russ Nelson]

Wow. You know absolutely NOTHING about economics, do you? In centrally-controlled societies like the socialists used to ask for (until they found out they don't work) the planners would simply ask for more seamless containment units to be built. In free market societies, factories which produce seamless containment units which are suddenly in much greater demand get to charge a much higher price. This is acceptable because the people who built such factories as exist planned well, and deserve their profits. Yet if they did not build enough factories, they won't make as much money. They will make more money if they build new factories, and that is exactly what will happen.

Same thing for laptop batteries. The price system communicates in real time, and flood-fills the marketplace with information about what should, and what should not be built.