I was listening to old episodes of Freakonomic’s Pod Cast and discovered that the 100 MPG(e) award was awarded way back in 2010. High lighted in the news story of the award was that the winning car would then be placed in the “…Energy Department’s fast-track program for production versions of their energy-efficient cars…”.
What is going on now with that car? There were three winners, a 4-seater, 2-seater, and 2-seater in tandem division winners. The car I’m curious about is the 4-seater.
I know the government is often slow compared to industry, and it seems to me that a fast track program started in 2010 would have some results at this point?
Thanks,
-Curious11
p.s. I searched the forums on “Automotive” “Prize” and didn’t see anything useful. Sorry if this was already asked and answered.
I think there must be some miscommunication, because the Department of Energy doesn’t put commercial items into production. The X Prize did specify that entrants would be “production capable,” as the Wikipedia entry explains.
If it was easy then everyone would have done it by now. My guess is that going from a prototype to production was a lot harder than everyone thought it would be.
Here’s an article on the winner. They never even tried to go to production because, I mean, look at it. It’s a tiny little box with no sound deadening or creature comforts to speak of. The rules required it to be “production ready” and had some vague wording about being able to accommodate a family of four, but there’s no way that car would pass the required crash tests and even if it did, they would sell maybe 10 of them.
Incidentally, that car was a conventional gas powered car with very little in terms of new technology. Just very small and very light. [sarcasm]Just the car that Americans clamor for![/sarcasm]
Kind of a poster child for the Fabulous Breakthrough Ideas that entrance whole subcultures because they work so well… under very limited, specific conditions that resemble the real world in the same way Trump’s hair makes him look like one of the Beatles.
And then, of course, it’s a conspiracy by Big ________ that keeps the breakthrough from revolutionizing the world.
It is oversimplifying a bit, but the three main options for car panels at this point are arguably plastic, steel, and carbon fiber. Plastic is light and cheap but flimsy. Steel is cheap and durable but second only to making them out of lead. Carbon fiber, especially the genuinely strong kind, is jaw droppingly expensive. Most other materials end up in one of those three categories- titanium is not much cheaper than carbon fiber, aluminum is a compromise between the three but ends up being expensive, kind of heavy, and not as strong as steel.
Unfortunately, advances in materials science (impressive as they are) are only half the job. Unless the manufacturing technology has advanced to make the material cheap and widely available, it just competes with other expensive options. Carbon is plentiful, and so is titanium ore for that matter. Its the difficulty in getting them ready to become a panel or frame that keeps them out of reach. And, also unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as just throwing money at the problem.
Personally, my bet on the next major material is going to be metal foams. From what I’ve seen, they’re extremely light but absorb impacts extremely well, deforming and then springing back. Likely the thing holding them back is the difficulty in getting consistent structure and density.
The tata nano is only about $2000 in India but costs three times that if you want us level safety, comfort and emission standards. Something like that can be going on with high mpg cars, the costs to make the safe, legal and comfortable is prohibitive.
Elio motors keeps talking about the or $6800 84mpg car but I don’t think it is released yet.
because it’s one thing to hand-build one or two proof-of-concept cars, and quite another thing to mass-produce them and make them last for 10 years/150,000 miles.
That, and the safety issues. Look at how curb weights have crept up and up, from safety and comfort gear, at the same time trying to reduce vehicle weights has been a priority. It’s one thing to build these prototypes that completely ignore safety aspects (except maybe in a vague roll-cage sort of way) and have no creature comforts, and another to build and sell a car that meets reasonable expectations for either.
And that’s “reasonable expectations” - not necessarily current NHTSA/DOT specs and cushy-butt features. Just not a bare-bones death box on wheels.
and this is exactly why GM took back all the EV-1s at the end of the program. The cars did not conform to even the safety regulations of the day, so GM had to maintain ownership of the cars and could not transfer ownership to anyone without updating them to comply.
Gonna have to call bullshit on this because not only was the EV-1 street legal and apparently passed the frontal crash tests from NHTSA, GM’s response to the furor over recalling the EV-1 doesn’t say safety regulations were an issue: GM Blog post response saved as a PDF
My understanding was that GM retained ownership and repossesed the cars at the end of each lease term because the batteries were unproven and they were worried they might blow up after reaching the end of their anticipated service life.
Thought experiment. Which is more effective in reducing carbon emissions, raising gas mileage from 20 to 35 mpg or raising it from 35 to 100?
The first reduces usage by 2.14 gallons/100 miles, while the second by only 1.86. This is why the European usage of liters/100km is a more useful way to measure fuel economy.