Major Carmakers Invited to Join "Demonstration Division" of Automotive X Prize

Source: Detroit News. The major carmakers and their relationship to the Automotive X Prize (AXP) has been very news worthy, and I know that the people behind the AXP have spent a lot of their time trying to induce the majors (GM, Toyota, Honda, etc.) to join. In fact, this issue is such an important issue that the piece I wrote about it Major Carmakers and the Automotive X Prize is the most popular post on this website.

Back in March, at the New York Auto Show, I learned that the AXP was contemplating a "manufacturers" category of the prize which would be focused on vehicles that are or will soon be in production. Not just "production capable" (which all competitors are supposed to be), but actually in production.

Now the AXP people are, on Sunday, at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS, in Detroit), going to launch this category, and it's called the "Demonstration Division". No prize money for the winners of this division, merely the good press of being part of the race. Peter Diamandis said the new division was created "to address the fact that actual high volume production vehicles involve more and substantially harder engineering challenges and tradeoffs than development vehicles that are production capable."

Actually of course the division is a lure - they are trying to making the AXP more attractive to the major carmakers by clearly separating them from the garage teams and automotive startups. If this separation can be kept clearly in the mind of viewers, it allows the majors to save face should they loose, and to keep themselves from looking like they are lagging in innovation. In the words of my previous analysis, this new category helps to reduce the RISK of participating.

However, an astute reader will note that I didn't think risk was the primary reason that the major automakers were not participating. I thought the real reason was legitimacy - their active participation would signal that the Automotive X Prize was a race with consequences to the industry. This new division does nothing to address legitimacy - in fact, if anything it makes the legitimacy issue more obvious. If the other teams vehicles are actually "production capable", why do the majors need a special category? Conversely, if there really is such a huge difference between "production capable" and "in production", doesn't that imply that viewers could safely ignore all the teams which are NOT in the new Demonstration Division?

Which brings us back to the issue I blogged about yesterday - just how serious will the "business plan" requirements of this contest be? One way to view this announcement of a special "Demonstration Division" is that the business requirements for teams outside of that division just got slashed.

Obviously I wish that the major carmakers would join the Automotive X Prize. But I am not so sure that creating a special division for them is the right way to do it. And based on the response from GM in that Detroit News story, I'm not sure that it's going to work either. Especially with the recession, the major carmakers simply have a lot on their plates already...

Can you think of any way to get the major carmakers to participate? I'm sure the Automotive X Prize folks would love to get an email with an innovative new way to get the majors involved... maybe what we need is a prize contest for ideas on how to get GM to race the Volt (pictured at NAIAS 2008) in the Automotive X Prize...