The Automotive X-Prize was a $10 million contest with a simple premise at its heart; produce a road-worthy, 100 MPG car. Sounds easy, but the contest was no joke, and at the end hundreds of contestants had been whittled down to three winners, the Edison2, Li-Ion Motors, and the X-Tracer team. Alas, none of these 100+ mpg vehicles will come to market en masse.But perhaps the prize just wasn’t big enough? That seems to be the thinking behind a new bill sponsors by California Republican Congressmen Dan Lungren, who proposes offering a $1 BILLION reward for any automaker that can build and sell 60,000 100 MPG vehicles.
Modeled after DARPA’s own version of the X-Prize, called the “Grand Challenge,” which challenges teams to develop an autonomous vehicle, Lungren’s prize would challenge automakers to build a 100 MPG mid-size sedan…and then sell 60,000 of them.
There are a couple of caveats though; the car must run on gasoline. No hybrids or electric vehicles allowed. Furthermore, the companies must be Incorporated in the United States. I’m not sure, but that may disqualify a number of Japanese and European automakers.
Another problem with this prize is that while a $1 billion is a lot of money to you or me, that is about what it costs for an automaker to develop a new car anyways. And unless such a vehicle is a runaway hit, it could take several years to sell 60,000 100 mpg cars, depending on the cost (and I doubt it would be cheap.)
Lungren’s bill has little hope of getting through our divided Congress at a time when the economy and budget deficit are front page news. But an affordable, mass-produced 100 mpg car could stretch out out limited oil supplies for a long, long time. Getting there without hybrid or electric vehicle technology might ultimately prove impossible though, even if this bill ever got passed (which it won’t.)
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About Christopher DeMorro
Great idea, let’s just hand the $1 billion over to Nissan then. Already in production and get 100MPGe (OK actually 99, but I’m sure a few tweaks could get it to 100). Or give it to Ford for the Focus EV, rated around 100MPGe. Or the Tesla Roadster, rated 119MPGe (even though it’s not in production any more).
So not only do you think Nissan is American, you think the Ford Focus EV is not electric? Did you read anything other than the title? No, I didn’t think so.
@Chris,
Hey I agree if the 102.5 MPG really happened, which it didn’t ( it was actually 68.68MPG). I really am tired of the “e” being dropped off. Please fact check before writing article. The whiner of the X-Prize did not even produce a road-worthy vehicle.
Without hybrid, EV or diesel, the best we could hope for would be ~50 mpg. Something along the lines of the Chevy Cruze Eco (slightly up-sized to make it mid-size) might be able to make 50 mpg in an EPA highway test if it were equipped with a 7-spd transmission (with the final gear having a overdrive ratio of 0.5** or so) and stripped down to be on the same luxury scale as a Geo Metro (no power options, no cruise control, no A/C, etc.).
**0.5 would mean for every revolution of the engine, the transmission output shaft would complete 2 revolutions.
The car must run on gasoline? Pointless. This is like having a prize for developing a horse and buggy that can go twice as fast.
As others have said about hybrids, even if you had a much more efficient gas-powered vehicle that replaced every current inefficient vehicle, you’d still be running on 100% gasoline. There are much more efficient vehicle platforms that don’t perpetuate the dependency on oil. Those should be encouraged (and are, with the current EV tax credits), not more of the same.
I get 500 mpg in my Volt already. There should be no need to have contests, high gas prices will take care of that because demand will spike for these cars….
MrEnergyCzar
500MPG — that is not counting the electricity. The Volt gets about 94MPGe in electric mode, and only low 30′s in charging mode.
Neil
The Illuminati Motor Works Seven gets 207MPGe, seats four, goes 200 miles on a single charge (and this would go up with a better/bigger battery. It goes 0-60 in 6.2 seconds. Building 60,000 is hard for a small startup.
So yeah, it looks like Nissan is well on their way — they have sold 10K+ already.
Neil
I suspect I could get 50mpg hwy out of a stock cruze eco on a budget of say $1000 – granted that doesn’t include the hours of my time, or the parts I am handy and knowledgable enough to make by myself.
I’d be surprised if with a $500,000,000 R&D budget I couldn’t produce a prototype of something that gets 100 mpg on gasoline.
The real kicker here is making a car that people would actually buy – although for a billion dollars, you could sell the cars pretty cheaply, afterall the engineering costs at the point are fully sunk anyway.
http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/press-trophies.php
On June 29 of 2010 Gas2.0 had an article about, Gordon Murray and his T.25 car in November of 2010 it was in a car competition The Royal Automobile Club Brighton to London Future Car Challenge. The car did better than expected in real world driving and got 96mpg (probably UK MPGs). It is a completely gas powered car using as they claim the “engine is yet to be fully optimized for fuel economy”
Murray also believes the car can be sold for $9000 USD and turn a reasonable profit. $1 Billion broken across 60k cars works out to $16.7k per car. Say you do a special deal and sell the 1st 50-60k for cost plus 2%, or even sell them for what you sell them for and offer a 10-25% rebate if they win the prize.
So less than 2 years ago it was close to the MPG how much more would it take to get there. Between Yamaha putting out a scooter that gets over 200 MPG and this car getting 96MPG how much effort is there to up the car to 100MPG or better. I wonder if it could be something as simple as putting in a Revetech engine in it?
-T
Interesting, but is it a mid-size sedan and could it pass the U.S. highway safety regulations? I’m going to guess the answer to both those questions is “no”. I’m not trying to downplay the importance of that car, but just trying to emphasize that the parameters put forth in this challenge (midsize sedan, no EV, no hybrid, no diesel, and the assumed requirement that it must pass safety) are too restrictive for modern technology to allow for it.
Didnt see the requirement for the mid-size car in this article but did find it in 2 spots on the FOX article. It passes the European standards but hasnt been tested by US standards. The T28 is designed to be a 4 seater and the T30 is the design for the US market.
Many cars seem like they can get to the all but 1 or 2 of the limits set forth, by the time we get to where we can meet those limits will they still be able to sell 60,000 cars.
-T