Filed under: Trends, Hybrids/Alternative
X PRIZE announced for fuel efficiency research
The X PRIZE Foundation has hired on Mark Goodstein as the Executive
Director of a new X PRIZE contest that will foster entrepenurial innovation in the area of automotive efficiency. We reported in January that
a prize of this nature was likely on the horizon and we’re glad to see it made official. As fun as the X-Cup race to outer space was, a major breakthrough in fuel efficiency for automobiles would be a much more useful achievement than being able to cart fat cats with deep pockets into lower orbit. No official word yet on the contest’s rules or what the prize will be, though we suspect it will likely be in the many millions.
Since it seems that the auto industry moves only by the hand of market pressure, here’s hoping that a large quantity of cash will motivate all those amateur engineers out there to save us from oblivion. You can bet that Autoblog will be sponsoring Eric Bryant, our own resident engineer, who can build a vehicle out of a garbage can, a roll of duct tape and a wire hanger that runs on Boo-Berry Kool-Aid and gets 168 mpg. Good luck Eric, as we’ve already spent the winnings on a fleet of Bugatti Veyrons for the staffers.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DKB_SATX 5:15PM (3/07/2006)
Except for the fact that the only thing guaranteed to come out of it is more fodder for the foil-hat crowd claiming that the program created a 200-mpg fuel injection system and the oil companies bought it to suppress the technology (or sent the inventor hunting with Dick Cheney...)
Considering the results the X-Prize got with the suborbital space race, I think this has potential. Hopefully something new and interesting will come of it. This seems like a good investment of the prize money.
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BeetleGo 7:22PM (3/07/2006)
Or leverage what is already widely available in Europe in the form of squeaky clean, highly developed, torque-crazy, high efficiency DIESELS. The US simply does not get it - yet. With any luck, we'll start to see more choices as ultra-low sulfur diesel is rolled out later this year.
40+mpg in something fast, substantial, and ever so willing to pass everything else around it GOING UP HILL is already in production. That's about twice our average mpg today. That'd be a nice place to start, if you ask me.
No prizes required. Just more education to build consumer demand.
~BeetleGo
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lalaland 7:37PM (3/07/2006)
Heck, someone can break out the Fish carburetor and it will all be over in a jiffy.
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amp 11:35AM (3/08/2006)
The devil in this competition is in the details. Any engineer worth his/her salt can throw together a vehicle that achieves 500+ mpg without breaking a sweat. But how useful are this vehicles? Not very. The criteria for an X-Prize entrant should include such items as minimum 0-60 times (not sub 6 seconds, but more like 10-15), passenger/cargo hauling ability, etc. Heck they should even throw in a safety requirement, because that will add weight and make the vehicle more realistic. Imagine the kinds of safety innovation wed get from these teams in an effort to reduce the weight-penalty. Also, the X-Prize committee should take care to design a test course that mimics real-life driving. None of this glass-smooth, banked ovals.
If, and only if, they can nail down these details, then itll be a worth contest.
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Larry Wagner 1:35PM (3/26/2006)
Is the market REALLY ready for increased auto efficiency? I spent a lot of effort in the 80s investigating the problem, had some simple answers, but felt that they weren't really welcome by those who had the power to impliment them. Bush's recent plea for techology that would releive our need for oil convinced me that I might have been wrong. Anyway, if someone has the ambition to follow through with it, the following is a concept for a simple fuel efficient, light weight engine I conceived back in my 20s. It picks up on technology from engineers from the turn of the century (last century.) They realized that in steam engines, that once the high pressure steam drove a piston down it's stoke, that it was a wasteful shame to vent that pressurized steam back to the atmosphere or to the condensor. Their first idea
for using this pressure was to send it through a series of piston cylinders that grew in progression. Once steam turbines came along, they did the same thing.
When the exhaust valve on an internal combustion engine opens, we loose a fantastic amount of energy (as indicated by the sound!) My design was of a vane type engine (simular to a hydaulic motor in design) that had a larger exhaust than inlet... allowing the pressurized gas to expand as the engine rotates. It would be a large, slow moving engine which could be made of plastics. It would be fed by a supply of warm, low pressure air (300 degrees F at 32 psi) A pressure chamber would hold a supply of this air. The chamber would be fed by a unique combustion/mixing chamber. A tiny compressor would feed a combustion chamber to produce a stream of high temp, high velocity, high pressure air.
This air would enter a mixing venturi which would act as an air transmission. It would siphon in dense cool air, trading high temp, high velocity air for a larger mass of cool, dense, low pressure air. This, again, would feed the vane type motor. The engine's exhaust would be just above ambient temperature and pressure.
The engine would weigh a couple of hunderd pounds and would only be turning at about two revs per second while producing the HP needed to maintain 60 mph on a full sized vehicle.
Have fun.
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Rich Easton 2:35AM (4/27/2006)
Let's go! Accelerated Composites' Aptera concept vehicle is a 2 seater, 850lb, aerodynamic composite tradition breaker. Projected 330mpg on 12hp diesel, with 25hp electric motor, ultracapacitor bank and continuously variable transmission. Stretch it by 48 inches, adding 30% to the weight, you have a 1200lb. four-seater that gets 200mpg. The 2-seater is under construction now. If they get a little money, a 4-seater is easy. The design is crash safe, producible and economically reasonable. Google them.
I propose the race be from coast to coast on southern route highways, 3000 miles on 15 gallons of diesel fuel. I wish I could contact the crew of the C2C (sea to sea)car project. They were going to go coast to coast unrefueled on a 250cc Honda motorcycle engine in a streamlined 3-wheeler similar to the Aptera in concept.
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Rich Easton 2:40AM (4/27/2006)
The main obstacle to 200mpg cars is vested interest in doing what we have always done, no matter how stupid it is. Institutional inertia. Bucky Fuller said that a good idea will not be adopted for at least 40 years. I guess that a later generation will have these cars. If there is a later generation.
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BioSolve 3:02PM (6/21/2006)
I agree with amp & beetlego and their comments, (see comment #4 & #2 respectively) however, I would go one step further. Let's start by making the goal 100 MPG fuel efficiency in an average mid-sized sedan. In achieving this, we would cut demand by about ~60% over five to seven years (Assuming average fuel economy is 28 MPG) thus completely solving the short term crises while allowing the time necessary to develop a more permanent, long-term solution!
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zee kirsh 1:50AM (9/18/2006)
this competition for single occupancy vehicles already exists and there is no stupid prize. it's here. http://www.sae.org/students/cdsnewsletter0705.pdf#search=%22he%20Society%20of%20Automotive%20Engineers%20(SAE)%20Supermileage%20Competition%20took%20place%20June%209%20in%20Marshall%2C%20Michigan.%22
the idea of combustion efficiency can be placed in
many differnt competitions with different constraints.
the reality is, we can drastically reduce world demand
and there is a fascinating competion that x-prize could
spend it's money on to achieve this momentous change.
it's called lobbying congress and mass media
legislation.
the best argument for the x prize is that the free press it gets will call attention to some supposed cause of 'high efficiency' but if you ask me....this is the problem. x-prize creates this nerd-like inaccessible image of fuel efficiency in the public's mind as if it's this or nothing.
keep in mind that GALLONS PER MILE measures fuel efficiency best, and our new epa labeling rules have retained our old MILES per gallon system that is outdateds and more complex.
so if you go from 1500 MPG to 3000 MPG...that's great, but it's not going to save anyone in the real world gas, PLUS MORE IMPORTANT it won't save us as much gas as making a simple suv that goes from 15 mpg to 35 mpg. why?...because it's the gallons per mile--the inverse---- that relates how much gas will be consumed by a consumer assuming a relatively steady amount of miles driven.
the bottome line is the competition will waste more gas than it will save by actually having people waste time effort and gas on creating another useless demonstration that will never go anywhere. PNGV almost basically achieved this too.....and it was shut down. becuase it was realized the american public wouldn't afford or even maybe be interested in the type of car that got 80 miles per gallon.
woopdy doo.
the technology for reducing gas consumption exists.
that technology is our capacity for changing our appetities! eat less gas you fatsoes.
zeev.
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