Tesla calls Town Hall meetings after email fails to calm angry buyers. Apparently the recent retro-active price increases (applying to people who thought they had already locked in their vehicle purchase) have made customers very angry.

Loremo to be on the road in March, in three different versions: EV, low-power, mid-power. They may not use a diesel engine, as was their original design, because of emissions requirements.

Both Tesla and Loremo have signed letters of intent to join the Automotive X Prize, but were not mentioned as participating in the first round of official teams.

Videos and pics of ZAP Alias (pictured), the photos are good (just what I asked for on Wed!) but the video is a disappointing shot of it moving very slowly in a warehouse.

Henrik Fisker talks about the future of the Karma, and a low-cost model, with lots of juicy details. It still looks like the Karma will not be competing in the Automotive X Prize – such a shame.

I got a Press Release from ZAP yesterday saying that they are bringing a red ZAP Alias (pictured) to the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) in New Orleans, January 24-29th, 2009. Best quote from the PR: “ZAP indicated the mass-production version of the Alias is targeted to be priced under $35,000. In 2009, ZAP plans to produce a limited number of hand-crafted, Signature Series Alias roadsters.”

I find it strange that they choose to include not a picture of this red Alias, but instead a computer rendering of it. Autoblog Green readers are tearing into them again. You can check out the newAlias Brochure II as well. I’m looking forward to seeing actual photos emerge from NADA next week.

EV Cast: Interview with Aperta. Bo and Ryan got to talk to Marques McCammon, CMO, and later Steve Fambro, cofounder and CTO of Aptera. The interview lasts about 23 minutes, so it’s a quick listen. Most notable: Aptera will be at TED, offering test drives! Further highlights are over the fold.

Tonight in Palo Alto, I’ll be presenting at the Future of Transport Future Salon, along with Brad Templeton. The Bay Area Future Salon is run by Mark Finnern, and I’ve been a regular audience member for years. It’s a wonderful event and I am proud to be asked to speak on my passion, X Prize Cars. I’ll be explaining the Automotive X Prize, introducing a few of the teams to the audience, and then giving some of my views on the future of transportation. You can download my 3MB Slide Show (PDF), I think the most interesting material for people who have been following the AXP here will be the last few slides where I have some points about the “Larger Picture”. You may also be able to watch the Future Salon live (7pm PST) at UStream.tv, assuming Mark is still doing that.

The Daily Green: short interview with John Shore, in which he says that there are now 36 teams who have signed the Master Agreement. This is an increase from 22 on November 19th, 2008. One new team that we know for sure is Myers Motors (pictured), who handed over their check live at the Detroit Auto Show (NAIAS). Myers is hard at work designing and building a two-seat version of their commuter vehicle. Other teams have until the end of February to convert from Letter of Intent Contenders to Registered Teams. The teams page still has only the 20 public teams from Nov 19th, but hopefully we’ll be getting some more names soon. Notable missing names include Tesla & Loremo, both crowd favorites.

Finally. You can check out the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE Competition Guidelines [PDF] yourself, or read on for a summary of the most important stuff. The document is 68 pages so I’m planning to split this effort up into two pieces – one now to let you know they have been released, with some quick notes, and several to follow over the next few days as I get some time with the document.

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…

A few of months ago the X Prize Foundation (XPF) opened up official registration for the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. The 120+ teams that we’ve been talking about here on X Prize Cars are actually only “letter of intent” teams, meaning they haven’t official applied to compete, only stated their intention of doing so once the competition opened.

Now it is open, and as expected the application requires some information which is targeted at the XPF’s attempt to make the team’s vehicles “production-capable cars that people will want to buy, not science projects or concept cars.” We’ve all been very curious about how this rhetoric will translate into actual rules and requirements.

Before I get into the details, I just want to say that this “business plan” requirement is fairly controversial amongst the teams. Many wish simply to be car people – modifying a car and racing it. The XPF’s attempt to enforce this requirement may well cause some teams to withdraw from the competition. That’s the price. The gain will be a more business-oriented group of competitors. Many teams are already businesses (Tesla, Aptera, and Poulsen Hybrid come to mind) and so this will be easy for them, but many others are not, and the process of drafting business plans will make them consider things they would otherwise not, like formalizing their plans with drawings and schematics, writing patents, coming up with ways to commercialize their technology, shopping their tech to big car makers, or even starting new car companies.

The trick will be in the balance here – if the requirements are too weak, many teams will simply fake it. If they are too strong, many teams may be forced out due issues which have nothing to do with the competitive status of their vehicle – like for instance a lack of business talent on their team, or a lack of interest in business. The new Registration Application (PDF) gives some first hints on this balance issue; read on for some details.

Happy New Year! A couple of videos this time, featuring Tesla, Aptera and Peter Diamandis.

Tesla & Aptera talk about the automotive bailout and themselves.

Tesla wants the bailout to happen, but wants the $15B to be returned to the fund for auto innovation. Any funds they get will go strictly towards the sedan, not the roadster.

Aptera wants a bailout as well, because they depend on American based auto suppliers. Their big problem right now is low gas prices – orders are dropping. Also, tight credit is hitting them. They have 3,700 orders for the first Aptera, which they plan to fulfill starting in late 2009. Note that this is a full year behind their original plan. If they achieve the new date they will still be doing better than most automotive startups, including Tesla

Peter Diamandis (pictured after a bailout joke) backstage at EG 08. “The way we transport ourselves today is basically lazy… we use an 80 year old technology”. The article links to his 20 minute talk at EG itself - start watching at 15:30 for Automotive X Prize material. Bionic human prize coming soon!