Automotive X Prize deadline draws near

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While big automakers struggle for survival, a bunch of small fry are keeping their eyes on the prize — as in the $10-million Progressive Automotive X Prize.

So far, about 40 vehicles have been entered in the competition, and the X Prize Foundation expects to have 50 entrants by the Feb. 28 sign-up deadline. (A partial list of entrants is available here.)

The goal is to develop clean, production-capable vehicles with fuel economy ratings of better than 100 miles per gallon (or, for electric and other alternative-powertrain vehicles, the equivalent thereof). To win, the vehicle must also win a stage race to be held in various U.S. cities next year.

In addition, the foundation announced today that it had enlisted Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, to evaluate the vehicles for safety and performance.

The $10-million prize — donated by sponsor Progressive Insurance — will be split 50-50 between the winners in the two main categories: Mainstream, which encompasses your basic four-wheel, four-passenger car; and Alternative, which includes electric motorcycles, bicycles, three-wheelers and the like.

What passes for “mainstream” in this event is, well, not exactly mainstream. For instance, Physics Lab of Lake Havasu is entering the Green Giant, a four-wheel drive SUV that runs on photovoltaics, steam/waste heat, weight exploiting hydraulics, hydrogen and electricity from rechargeable batteries.

Robert Luther, owner of Kinetix Motors of Santa Ana, is entering his sharp E4 Sport Hatch — a ground-up design that’s basically a diesel-electric hybrid that will also draw on solar and thermal energy for power.

“I’m just a dreamer, man, but I’m also a doer,” says Luther, who started out in car stereos and now makes and distributes after-market performance gear. He started designing a hyper-efficient car about three years ago, “and then the X Prize came around, and it was a perfect opportunity to take a run at it.” (More info on the E4 is available on his company’s website.)

The current crisis in the auto industry, not to mention the credit crunch, the stock market collapse and the dramatic fall in gas prices, haven’t been kind to the X Prize. There is talk that financing may be drying up for some entrants, and the foundation pushed the deadline back to attract more entries.

As it is, the 50 entrants expected for the actual competition are well below the more than 120 parties that initially expressed interest.

Building 100-mpg vehicles also raises interesting safety issues. Some of the same things that are important to super-high fuel efficiency, such as hyper-aerodynamic design, light-weight materials etc., can — emphasis on can — work against the best interests of accident avoidance and passenger safety, according to David Champion, head of Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Division.

Champion said his testers would put the cars through the usual safety tests — wet and dry braking, avoidance maneuvering and so on. In addition, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which perform crash tests on vehicles now sold in the U.S., will evaluate the vehicles for crash worthiness (although they obviously won’t put the one-of-a-kind vehicles through actual crash tests.)

In addition to some of the lesser-known entrants — such as 7K Hamsters from New Mexico and The Little Engine That Can from Minnesota — the X Prize competition has drawn some higher-profile names, such as Carlsbad, Calif.-based Aptera and Indian automaker Tata Motors.

Whether the X Prize competition actually leads to improvements in fuel economy for the cars we buy and drive remains to be seen. Robert Luther, for one, thinks winning the prize would be a step toward reinventing an industry that, right now, at least, is badly in need of new thinking.

“I want to build a new a new car company from the ground up,” he says. “I want to make a run at building a new American car company.”

-- Martin Zimmerman

Top photo: Automotive X Prize entrants on display at the 2008 New York Auto Show (credit: X Prize Foundation)