E85-Powered Car Getting 102 MPG Wins $5 Million Top Award in X Prize Contest
By Scott Doggett September 16, 2010
An ultralight, ethanol-powered car getting 102 miles per gallon using a conventional internal combustion engine won the $5 million top award offered by the $10 million Automotive X Prize, a contest to build a safe, affordable car that gets at least 100 mpg or the equivalent in real world driving.
Edison2 receives $5 million prize.
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The winner in the mainstream class for a 4-passenger, 4-wheel vehicle and recipient of half of the $10 million in prize money was the Lynchburg, Va.-based Edison2 team with a score of 102.5 MPGe for the Very Light Car No. 98, a vehicle packing a 250cc engine that uses E85 ethanol fuel.
Oliver Kuttner, the founder of Edison2, said his target price for mass-production of the vehicle is $20,000.
The Edison2 car (left) is built on a steel frame but otherwise uses mostly aluminum parts. That kept the weight down to 830 pounds, or about a quarter of the weight of a typical car.
Kuttner said some of the prize money will go into development of the next-generation light car. He said the team is now focused on making the car more consumer-friendly and "easier on the eyes," but without adding to its weight or hurting its fuel economy.
Once Edison2 is convinced the car is ready, Kuttner, a real-estate developer and race-car driver, plans to find partners to manufacture and distribute it.
The alternative class winner for a 2-passenger vehicle in a side-by-side configuration and recipient of $2.5 million was Mooresville, N.C.-based Li-Ion Motors with a score of 187.0 MPGe for the Wave II battery-electric vehicle.
The alternative class winner for a 2-passenger vehicle in a tandem configuration and recipient of $2.5 million was Team X-Tracer of Winterthur, Switzerland, with a score of 187.6 MPGe for the E-Tracer, an enclosed, electric motorcycle with stabilizer wheels for parking and low speeds.
Rating the vehicles with MPGe was a metric developed by the X Prize and Consumer Reports to allow the evaluation of vehicles that used different kinds of fuels.
The X Prize, which was funded by Progressive Insurance, gave 111 teams 30 months to develop their vehicles and then put them through driving, safety and efficiency tests.
All of the winners are now eligible for a U.S. Department of Energy program that will help ready the vehicles for introduction to the U.S. market.
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Make it.
To greenpony,
We know it can be done. I will dedicate most of the energy left in the rest of my lift to this.
It is the right thing to do.
For you and my children
Thank you
Air conditioning?
Stereo?
Roll down windows?
Creature comforts that might make it actually sell?
Who has an E85 station nearby to refuel on the way home from work?
The Edison2 website states "Very Light Car is a simple vehicle, avoiding the feature creep that has loaded down contemporary vehicles."
To me, that just means a 'bare-bones' Tin-lizzy that has no appeal to the masses, and won't sell enough to achieve critical profit margins to sustain the company.
I'll take a few less MPGe, in exchange for a heater, A/C and a stereo. I spend 1/12 of my waking life in a vehicle... I expect to be comfortable.
Aptera seems to have the "creature comforts" and technology integrated appropriately into their cars. Aptera seems to have a much higher chance of successfully mass producing and marketing their car, than the Edison2 company with their VLC... "X-Prize" or not.
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