Automotive X Prize News: Dec 24th, 2007

By Eric Boyd on December 24, 2007 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tags:

Aptera,

CAFE,

Miles EV,

Tesla

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...

Miles Automotive EV Test Drive - in China - Miles Automotiveis not (yet) an official competitor.

Tesla early transmissions to be locked in 2nd gear and Tesla Raising $40M, partly to compensate for the expense and delay of this issue. And, check out the recent Tesla Blog post: Tesla shooting for IPO (not soon), among many other interesting things that were said.

Interesting slashdot commentary on the Wired and PM articles. AutoblogGreen commentary

Wired: How Detroit will reach 35 MPG - the most interesting thing about the new CAFE standards is that they use the old old EPA mileage estimates, and therefore: "Translating CAFE numbers to 2008 window sticker numbers, 35 becomes 27, 27.5 becomes 21, and 22.5 becomes 17. Of course, that doesn't compensate for ethanol and other tricks manufacturers can pull." (thanks to commenter mulad for this). The long and the short is, it really won't be hard to manufacturers to achieve this new standard. Clearly the federal government is not as ambitious as the Automotive X Prize...