FuelVapor Technologies shows off X-Prize competitor

Click one the Ale for a high-res gallery of the X-Prize competitor

Three wheelers seem to be all the rage lately for automotive startups. This probably has something to do with the fact that they are classed as motorcycles and therefore not subject to pesky automotive safety regulations like crash tests. A company called FuelVapor Technologies has created a car called the Alé which they are intending to enter in the Automotive X-Prize and our buddy John from Autoblog actually spotted it at the SEMA show last fall.

The X-Prize is looking for cars that exceed 100mpg and the Alé currently only gets a claimed 92mpg from its modified Honda four-cylinder engine. The team has developed a fuel system they claim vaporizes the gasoline and runs at extremely line lean air-fuel ratios. Currently it looks like it's optimized more for performance than efficiency so they probably have some room for adjustment. What may be a bigger problem is demonstrating that there is a market for 10,000 of these a year, as required by the X-Prize rules.

[Source: FuelVapor Technologies via Gizmodo]