Kinetic Vehicles MAX Withdraws from Automotive X Prize
MAX Update No. 32: Why We Resigned from the Auto X Prize. I'm sorry to see Kinetic Vehicles leave - they were a great team with a great vehicle. Their reason for leaving?
But lately, this competition has been interfering with our goal for MAX: a high-mileage car you can build on a budget. The final rules have no place for a DIY car, and preparing MAX (even on paper) for factory production -- as in 10,000 cars a year -- has been sucking up our resources like you wouldn't believe. In the last year I have literally spent more hours filling out X Prize Foundation paperwork than I've spent developing MAX, and MAX has suffered for it. Instead of working on streamlining to improve the car's gas mileage, I've been writing business plans and tech documents and getting price quotes, for every single part in the car. Imagine trying to figure out the cost of 20,000 windshield wiper blades to be delivered in five years, etc., etc., etc.
This is evidence that the balance between business plan requirements and automotive engineering is currently on the business plan requirements, and this is having the predicted effect of pushing out teams that just want to build cars. Will this be good for the AXP? We won't know that until we know how many teams actually make it through this gauntlet. Kinetic Vehicles isn't the first team to drop out - in fact, it's just the most high profile of a whole string of recent drop outs.
How much work is it reasonable to ask teams to perform to ensure that the vehicles are "production capable"?
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At Gaia Transport, we have exactly the same issues as Kinetic. The paperwork load interferes with out ability to innovate. We've not dropped out, but recognize that this is slowing down our time to market.
The current competition MPGe calculator considers PHEVs a "special case" and produces, for the Chevy Volt, a figure of 30.9 MPGe, but produces a figure for the less efficient Tesla (in terms of miles per kilowatt-hour) of over 100 MPGe. You can download the spreadsheet and try this for yourself: The volt gets (at least) 40 mpg when running on gas. It uses 250 watt-hours per mile. Put those figures in the "special" section of the spreadsheet, and see what you get.
Fair? Influenced by Elon Musk, who is on the X Prize board?