Innovation: 100-mpg car contest starters orders

Last night in California, a list of 111 teams have been announced - one in May are the key to the green car of the future. Participants are enrolled in the Progressive Auto X Prize, a contest that will award a total of $ 10 million for vehicles that can go 100 miles of power equivalent to one gallon of fuel.

By its absence has been one of the largest automobile manufacturers - india company Tata bar - which did not seem interested in participating. The black list is diverse encompassing the implementation of electric cars in California, less sophisticated efforts to complete new projects.

View the gallery of some of the vehicles entered in the Auto X Prize

But you can be sure that the automotive giants would be very closely the progress of participants through the design and evaluate the performance of the test phases, scheduled for this year and that the tests should begin in 2010. The competition provides an opportunity for smaller players to shake an industry long dominated by giants, the companies established in their ways.
New Beginnings

"This is an opportunity for niche players to make a big difference," Nick Carpenter, technical director of the small British firm Delta Motorsport, told New Scientist. Delta is finalizing the design of a low, four-seat sports coupe, which will use a single, lightweight electric motor developed at Oxford University and is planned to continue the trial in late 2009.

"If we or any of the other small teams may become the next GM or Ford, is another matter," says Carpenter, "but the competition gives us the opportunity to take a new approach emerged from history." Some of these new ideas was broken in May by the largest fish, he says, but even those who do not yet have the opportunity to shine and to influence the future of the mass of the vehicle.

The price seems to be to provide entertainment and technology advances. Participants are a diverse mix ranging from innovation, proven and frankly even wild ideas, but rules for the more serious efforts are producing vehicles that are far from ready to use on our roads.
Demanding tasks

This is because although it is relatively easy to make a road vehicle travel 100 miles at the equivalent of a gallon of fuel, the price comes with other criteria, for more than a challenge.

The principal of $ 7.5 million for the models with four-wheeled bag, carrying four people forced to travel 200 miles on a single charge of fuel of your choice - the goal of efficiency - and should accelerate 0 to 60 mph in 12 seconds and a speed of 100 miles per hour.

The lesser of 2.5 million dollars to the price of any design vehicles carrying two or more people forced to go 100 miles on a principle and for at least 80 mph. The two categories to limit carbon emissions and the demand for realistic plans to manufacture 10,000 vehicles a year.

Down-to-ground restrictions, combined with the target height, the mentality of the participants seem to provide a kind of contest is worth seeing. Who knows, may even change the road in the world.

from:newscientist

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