Inside the Auto X-Prize Finals: Like Most Other Races, But Oh, So Quiet

Inside the Auto X-Prize Finals: Like Most Other Races, But Oh, So Quiet

By John O'Dell August 10, 2010

(Editor's Note: Auto writer Ronald Ahrens has been following the Progressive Automotive X-Prize fuel efficiency competition since it began and was on hand last month as the last few contenders from the 113 teams that began the grueling trial were winnowed down to a handful of finalists.  He filed this report for Green Car Advisor.)

By Ronald Ahrens, Contributor

Brooklyn, Mich. - For those of us accustomed to hearing big NASCAR machines thundering around the two-mile oval at Michigan International Speedway, it sure was hard to get used to the hush-hush of the Progressive Automotive X Prize performance finals event here.

Screenplay title: "Days of Whisper."

Except for a bit of patter from the E85-burning, 250cc single-cylinder engine of the Edison2 Team's four-seat Very Light Cars (right) and the chuffing and protestation of the few other internal combustion entries - all bu the Edison2 cars since eliminated - the only sounds to be heard from the track were tires humming over the asphalt and the occasional bleat of a vehicle's horn as the driver - perhaps out of boredom after cruising the oval at a top speed of no more than 70 mph (the maximum allowed by the speedway, for liability reasons) - tooted while crossing the finish line.

In other respects, though, the X Prize finals trial last month resembled any other race.

There was a fair amount of griping about the sanctioning body, the occasional implication that another entry had pushed the rules too far, and a good deal of bragging about how particular vehicles were achieving unheard of levels of performance - in this case fuel economy was the measurement - that would certainly change the world.

Blame Game

Something else familiar: the blaming and excuse making after losers fell out of the competition.

There's also been some grumbling about teams that are going into the last phase and are in competition for some of the competition's $10 million purse:  X-Tracer Team Switzerland's two E-Tracers (right) in the Alternative Tandem class exist at the very edge of the rulebook and have raised eyebrows form the start.
 
The contest, which will be decided after until dynamometer testing of the finalists ends later this month, is intended to promote development of production-capable automobiles that can deliver fuel efficiency of at least 100 miles per gallon - or the alternative-fuel equivalent of same.

The rules cover three and four-wheel vehicles, but the E-Tracers are enclosed two-wheelers. Their saving feature is training wheels that automatically deploy in Swiss-Army-knife fashion when low-speed wobbling begins.

At a press briefing, Automotive X-Prize technical operations director Steve Weseloski said the Swiss entries "met all the deliverables" in qualifying for the tournament - the training wheels were counted.

If the $2.5 million Tandem class prize is carried off to Switzerland some will think it akin to the Cheshire cat posing as a hound to win a blue ribbon at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

 'Not For Everyone'

The term "production capable" was also stretched a bit.

Yes, the three-wheeled Spira4U (left) may have been production capable - in a Pixar production. But the market case for this foam-bodied, mobile tanning bed that was entered in the Tandem category but failed to make it through the finals seemed, well, soft. Had it crumbled in a crash, the pieces could have been recycled as extra cushioning inside the racetrack's Safer Barrier.

X Prize Foundation chairman Peter Diamandis urged listeners in a conference at the speedway during the finals to "change the paradigm so you can have it all - beautiful, safe, fast - and get 100 miles per gallon." He couldn't have been thinking of the decidedly unlovely Spira4U on any count.

CALSTART executive Bill Van Amburg told the same audience to find market niches and use corporate fleets to get started in the marketplace.  His Califoria-basd organization works to help promote alternative energy and advanced transportaiton busnesses.

"The cars in the X Prize are not the cars for everyone," Van Amburg said in a classic caseof understatement.  

Volcanoes and Twisters

A few highlights from the July 24 finals competition:

Back in April, Martin Moscheid, leader of the Project TW4XP team from Germany, looked slightly pained while attending the competition's Shakedown run.

His three-wheel E-Mobile Motors Twike ("Twin Bike") hadn't made it over from Germany. Remember the Icelandic volcano?

So great was the backlog of cargo at Frankfurt that he'd been told, "Don't even bring it." The car (left) sat under cover back at team headquarters in Rosenthal until a special session before the Knockout Round in June.

The battery-electric Twike made it through the finals, though, turning in an impressive 139 mpg-equivalent during a tie-breaker competition among finalists in its class.

The Li-ion Motors team's electric Wave II also joined that makeup session and got through the finals with an even 125 mpg-equivalent.

But the team, mostly hardcore racers from Mooresville, N.C., down in NASCAR country, had a different reason for the exemption from the April trial: the final Shakedown exercise for Wave II (left) was rained out by one of many thunderstorms that plagued the Automotive X Prize activities.

How bad were the storms? Western Washington University's team camped out at the track to save money and had to huddle inside the speedway's new media center and suites during one nighttime tornado warning. When the team brought its Viking 45 back for the Finals phase in July, a benefactor, the father of a team member, rented a nearby lakeside cottage for the collegians' use.

Team TW4XP and Li-ion Motors both have advanced to validation testing in the Alternative Side-by-Side (two-abreast) division and one could yet win the $2.5 million reserved for that classification.

A Different Approach

Aerodynamics expert Barnaby Wainfan talked to us while waiting for one variant of the Edison2 Very Light Car to make its run during the June 24 Knockout Round.

"One of the things that's great about the X Prize, in general, it forces us to think differently," Wainfan said.

Helping to design the Edison2 team's E85-burning vehicles, Wainfan got to start with a clean sheet of paper and every intent of making few, if any, compromises.

He said designers and engineers are accustomed to thinking in terms of incremental gains. "This prize set the bar so high, you can't do that," Wainfan said.

Instead, he and other Edison2 designers went straight for the most innovative solutions. He spoke of such inspirations as the Dowty lever suspensions for aircraft, a forefather of the VLC's own in-wheel suspension. He also spoke of the extreme aerodynamics of the Panhards that excelled in endurance racing during the 1950s and 1960s. "You look at things like this and they tell you it can be done."

Wrapping Up

From the finals, nine competitors have advanced to the Validation Round of testing at Argonne National Laboratory that began last week and will end late this month. They will undergo yet another grueling set of tests, this time on the dynamometer and in the emissions lab.

Lacking headwinds, the speedway's scrub-inducing banking and the track's heat and humidity, the lab validations could actually yield higher performance numbers on the EPA fuel economy cycles and durability runs; but mechanical failures at this point will mean absolute elimination.

The gross results from the Validation sessions will be averaged with those from the Finals to determine the winners, if any.

Both examples of Edison 2's Very Light Car were the only survivors in the Mainstream class for four-seaters, and the two Swiss E-Tracers were the only Alternative Tandem class vehicles  to advance. So Edison 2 is competing against itself for the $5 million Mainstream prize money while the Swiss team is pitting its vehicles against each other for the Tandem category's $2.5 million prize.

There are five finalists vying for the $2.5 million purse in the Alternative Side-by-Side category.

At this stage, there is no guarantee that any of the finalists will be able to meet all the requirements to qualify for a share of the prize money.

A Real Race

Because they are alone in their categories, neither Edison 2 nor the E-Tracers took to the track July 27 for the wicked tie-breaker event - a 100-mile race (with that 70 mph lid on top speed) in which performance and fuel economy will determine the victor in the event there is a tie at the end of this month's Validation stage.  

Five Alternative Side-by-Side Class cars went out for the 100 mile match, in which organizers made things even more difficult by adding a chicane on the backstretch, requiring a minimum speed of 45 mph through the turns.

The battery-electric Aptera 2e three-wheeler from San Diego dropped out early because of an electronic failure. The Zap Alias - a three-wheel EV from Northern California driven by team member Chuck Turney (filling in for the unavailable NASCAR star Al Unser Jr.who piloted the Alias in an earlier round) ran out of juice within four miles of the finish.

Not finishing puts both Zap and Aptera at a disadvantage should the point totals from the finals round and the lab testing put them in a tie with any of the other finalists in their class.

The sometimes wobbly Twike blithely handled the chicane's long-radius turns - tanks to its controversial training heels - and finished the test.

And former stock car driver Bill Bratton, a member of the Li-Ion Motors team, provided drama in the Side-by-Side class tie-breaker. Pressing the eminently aerodynamic Wave II as hard as possible, the native Virginian closed to within a hair of the RaceAbout Association's sleek four-wheel electric coupe from Finland.

The aptly-named RaceAbout (right) won the race and turned in 100 mpg-equivalent fuel economy. 

Progressive Insurance marketing chief Brian Silva called the X Prize "an amazing adventure for hundreds of people" and said he "looks anxiously forward to awarding the $10 million."

Winners will be announced at a Sept. 16 ceremony in Washington, D.C.

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X Tracer Team E-Tracer, TWX4P Twike and Li-ion Motors Wave II photos courtesy of Progressive Automotive X-Prize.

All other photos by Ronald Ahrens for Green Car Advisor

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.