Video: MonoTracer E cruises the American southwest at 300 mpge

The Automotive X-Prize-winning X-Tracer – now going by the MonoTracer E moniker to fall in line with the highly efficient, gas-powered MonoTracer from Switzerland – is coming to the U.S. in production form sometime in 2011. Before that happens, the lucky few – specifically Peraves CEO Roger Riedener (in a yellow MonoTracer E) and North American sales representative Jim Lorimer (in a white MonoTracer) – got to explore the American Southwest on a 625-mile trip from California to the SEMA show in early November.

Longtime electric vehicle fan Stefano Paris was not on that trip, but he has already logged 1,000 miles on a MonoTracer E and blogs about the video here. During the X-Prize, the MonoTracer E managed to get 205.3 miles per gallon equivalent, so that'd be just five gallons of "fuel" to go all that distance. Paris writes that the MonoTracer E actually used just 70kWhr of energy on the drive, which "works out to 8.9 mi per kWhr or ~300MPGe (using 35kWhrs for the energy equivalency of 1 gallon of gasoline)." That's astounding, especially for a vehicle that is on the road today. Too bad it's so expensive. We can't wait to take our turn in one and see if the tandem design is well-designed for the long haul ourselves. Until then, check out the video after the jump.

[Source: Stefano Paris]

The video meant to be presented here is no longer available. Sorry for the inconvenience.