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Ethanol-Powered Car Wins the Automotive X-Prize
A vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine beats electric cars to the $10 million competition.
By Kevin Bullis
Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids have been enjoying the limelight recently as leading candidates for the energy efficient cars of the future, but a car powered by an internal combustion engine just rolled away with the top prize in the Automotive X-Prize. This contest has seen teams race vehicles that achieve the at least the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline (MPGe) (under prescribed driving conditions), and that pass U.S. emissions and safety standards.
On Thursday, the Edison2 team won the $5 million prize in the "mainstream" vehicle class, which required the car to transport four passengers and to have at least a 200-mile range. The team's car achieved 102 MPGe. The mile-per-gallon equivalent figure is a way to compare the efficiency of cars that use different kinds of fuels or energy sources, in a competition that included cars powered by natural gas, ethanol, gasoline, diesel, and energy stored in batteries. It's calculated by determining how far the car travelled and how much energy it consumed relative to the energy content of a gallon of gasoline.
The team's design formula was simple: make the car extremely light and aerodynamic, so that it can be powered by a small 250 cc, single-piston motorcycle engine. The winning car weighed 376 kilograms (830 pounds) and had a coefficient of drag of 0.15, far less than the Prius, which with a coefficient of drag of 0.25 is one of the best on the road today. Innovations included an aerodynamic body design like a diamond (rather than the rectangle base sedans have) that's supposed to deflect other vehicles in the case of an accident, and lightweight wheels that project out from the sides of the car and serve to absorb impact in an accident.
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A vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine beats electric cars to the $10 million competition.
By Kevin Bullis
Electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids have been enjoying the limelight recently as leading candidates for the energy efficient cars of the future, but a car powered by an internal combustion engine just rolled away with the top prize in the Automotive X-Prize. This contest has seen teams race vehicles that achieve the at least the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline (MPGe) (under prescribed driving conditions), and that pass U.S. emissions and safety standards.
On Thursday, the Edison2 team won the $5 million prize in the "mainstream" vehicle class, which required the car to transport four passengers and to have at least a 200-mile range. The team's car achieved 102 MPGe. The mile-per-gallon equivalent figure is a way to compare the efficiency of cars that use different kinds of fuels or energy sources, in a competition that included cars powered by natural gas, ethanol, gasoline, diesel, and energy stored in batteries. It's calculated by determining how far the car travelled and how much energy it consumed relative to the energy content of a gallon of gasoline.
The team's design formula was simple: make the car extremely light and aerodynamic, so that it can be powered by a small 250 cc, single-piston motorcycle engine. The winning car weighed 376 kilograms (830 pounds) and had a coefficient of drag of 0.15, far less than the Prius, which with a coefficient of drag of 0.25 is one of the best on the road today. Innovations included an aerodynamic body design like a diamond (rather than the rectangle base sedans have) that's supposed to deflect other vehicles in the case of an accident, and lightweight wheels that project out from the sides of the car and serve to absorb impact in an accident.
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