December 2007 Archive
Posted in Uncategorized on December 20th, 2007 by admin – Be the first to comment
December 2007 Archives
Automotive X Prize News: Dec 30th, 2007
Minor news this week – Aptera’s recent publicity has sold almost 300 more cars, a GM EV-1 was driven in the wild, and other tidbits…
Which cars/teams next?
The Automotive X Prize lists 47 teams right now, and I have pages for only five of them - Aptera, Tesla, ZAP, Zero Pollution Motors and Loremo. My survey of the teams websites shows that there are nine more who are far enough along for me to make a page on them. Read on for the list, and feel free to comment on which teams you’d like to see a page for first.
Loremo LS
The Loremo LS is basically a turbo-diesel vehicle optimized to the hilt. Its got low weight, great aerodynamics, a small engine, and has been engineered for safety and low cost. Like others who are as far along (Aptera, Tesla), the company behind the Loremo has been at this since before the Automotive X Prize was even imagined. Check out the new page on the Loremo LS, or read on for the same information in a less pretty format.Automotive X Prize News: Dec 24th, 2007
After the two huge stories last week, which both got large reflections in the blogosphere, there are still some things left to talk about now 
. Read on for the usual small group of relevant links…
For those curious what this whole site is about, I thought I would make a summary page – the short version of the Automotive X Prize Rules. In fact, the rules are currently not set. What we have is the Draft Rules and Competition Guidelines Revision Topics, dense documents. The Automotive X Prize is a complicated beast, but here’s the short version:
- A staged race (think Tour de France) across America, to be held in 2010.
- All competitors must achieve 100 MPG equivalent, with CO2 (equivalent) emissions <200 g/mile
- Two classes of vehicles: Mainstream and Alternative
- Mainstream class cars must have 4 wheels and seat 4 adults
- Alternative class cars may have any number of wheels, and will be divided into two sub-classes: (i) 2 seats, side-by-side and (i) everything else
- Race stages are not yet defined, but will include some city driving, some highway driving, and at least one stage so long it will require a refueling enroute
- Some stages will be “scoring” while others are “show” stages and will not count towards victory
- All teams will be required to submit a business plan showing “production capable” status: the car must be able to be made (according to the detailed plan) “at a price the market is likely to bear”
- Vehicles must be safe – their rules spell out a number of criteria and some tests that all vehicles must pass
The goal of the Automotive X Prize is not to have another meaningless “efficiency contest”, like the Shell Eco Marathon, or the World Solar Challenge, or SAE Supermileage, which have spawned lots of interesting vehicles that no one can (or would) buy. The Automotive X Prize wants its contestants (and especially its winners) to actually produce and sell cars to the public – and the rules are designed around this goal.
If you are familiar with the draft rules, read on for a quick summary of their “Revision Topics”.
MDI Inc. and Zero Pollution Motors CityCAT
Motor Development International was founded by Guy Negre, the famous Formula One car designer, after he was inspired by the compressed air engine starting technology he encountered on the race tracks. He has cobbled together numerous small investors and runs MDI on a franchise model – for $10M, you too can have your own compressed air car factory. Zero Pollution Motors has teamed up with MDI Inc. to race the air car in the Automotive X Prize. Check out our new MDI CityCAT page, or read on for a less pretty presentation of the same information.
UPDATED: On March 27th 2008 this page (and the PDF) was updated, removing references to “Air Car” and adding a little more information.
Aptera and AXP in the News
Two huge stories today – I decided that they should not wait until my usual Monday wrapup, especially since I want to do a more in-depth treatment of them. We’ve got a piece from Wired titled 1 Gallon of Gas, 100 Miles — $10 Million: The Race to Build the Supergreen Car, and a piece from Popular Mechanics titled Aptera’s Super-MPG Electric Typ-1 e: Exclusive Video Test Drive. Go read them both, or read on here for some nice bullets of the facts they lay out.
No big news this past week – just the usual collection of interesting news from major automotive manufacturers.
Automotive X Prize News: Dec 9th, 2007
The big news this week was an in-depth article by C-net on the automotive x-prize: Newest X Prize targets 100 mpg car, featuring only a few paragraphs about the AXP, but 10 pages of detail on some of the teams and their vehicles. The teams featured are (in page order): Aptera, Commuter Cars, FuelVapor Technologies, Loremo, Maine Automotive, Zero Pollution Motors (MDI), Phoenix, ZAP Motors, Team Twike IV, and the Society for Sustainable Mobility (OSGV). Apparently many of the cars are going to be featured at the Detroit Auto Show in January, but the Automotive X Prize itself will not be officially launched “at least until the New York Auto Show in the spring” (March 21th). Read on for rest of the news from this week.
GM Chevy Volt
Tags:
- Chevy Volt,
- E-REV,
- GM,
- li-ion,
- PHEV
The Chevy Volt is the most marketed of the new generation vehicles – GM has spent a small fortune on TV ads. And it shows in the level of interest people are expressing – alone among such concept cars, the Chevy Volt has its own independent community discussion site at GM-Volt.com. GM has stated numerous times now that it is committed to bringing this vehicle to market in large numbers. XPrizeCars feels that even though the vehicle does not achieve 100+ MPGe, we had to have a page for this vehicle. So here it is: Chevy Volt. Or read on for a less pretty version of the same information.Plug-in Prius
Toyota has been working on a plug-in version of their popular hybrid-electric Prius. This new version will allow the owner to plug the vehicle into the electric grid in order to recharge the batteries. With the larger battery pack (currently exactly double the old capacity), Toyota claims that the vehicle achieves about 8 miles of all-electric operating range. It’s not in AXP 100 MPGe territory yet, but XPrizeCars believes that Toyota could easily make it so, and furthermore that Toyota is more likely than other major automotive manufacturers to compete in the AXP. Check out our new PHEV Prius page, or read-on for a less pretty version of the same information.ZAP X Crossover EV
Tags:
- EV,
- PML Flightlink,
- ZAP,
- ZAP X
ZAP is most known for their neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs), low speed cars suitable for use on campus or in other speed-restricted areas. Recently they have been making waves with announcements of higher speed and higher performance EVs, including this concept car, the ZAP X Crossover EV, which is engineered by Lotus. Of course, ZAP is famously in debt and notorious for press releases which lead to nothing, but if they are truly developing this vehicle as described it’s a world changing car. Check out our new page on the ZAP X Crossover EV
Automotive X Prize News: Dec 2nd, 2007
There are a lot of “green car” news blogs on the internet. Reading them directly takes a lot of time – and much of the material is not very relevant to the Automotive X Prize. XPrizeCars offers this weekly news update of relevant stories for people who are interested in the Automotive X Prize, the teams competing and their cars. Here in the early going, we will also post stories about cars and teams who might decide to compete later.
