X Prize contender passes 200-mile test

BROOKLYN, Mich. — The three Very Light Cars designed and built in Lynchburg by Edison2 — a team led by Charlottesville entrepreneur Oliver Kuttner — have passed the efficiency and range tests of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize and are one giant step closer to winning up to $7.5 million in prize money.

The team’s two four-seat vehicles in the “mainstream” category both proved Friday at the Michigan International Speedway that they could travel for at least 200 miles without stopping to refuel.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the mainstream cars demonstrated their unprecedented levels of fuel economy. According to official results released Friday night, one of Edison2’s mainstream cars recorded 100.3 miles per gallon, combined highway and city mileage. The other notched 95.6 miles per hour combined, though Kuttner believes the car could have easily managed to achieve 100 miles per gallon, but it was stuck in traffic during a portion of testing Wednesday and the results were skewed. Wind, he added, was also a factor in keeping the mileage lower than the cars are capable of achieving.

“We feel really, really good,” Kuttner said, adding that “100.3 is really a world record, but it’s not nearly the number that this car can produce.”

Edison2’s pair of four-seat class cars are the only ones left in the X Prize’s mainstream competition. They beat out more than 80 competitors that originally entered the X Prize, a contest to create a commercially viable car that can go 100 miles on a single gallon of gas.

Yet Edison2 has not yet captured the X Prize. The team must first pass safety testing on Monday, demonstrating that it can meet acceleration and braking requirements, as well as maneuver around hazards.

If the Very Light Cars survive safety testing — and Kuttner is highly confident that they will — then they will go on to undergo further closed door testing at the Argonne National Laboratory in August. If any car emerges from that stage and is named the winner of the mainstream competition’s $5 million purse, it will be one of Edison2’s two vehicles.

Edison2’s third vehicle, a two-seat “alternative” class vehicle, is also still in the running for one of the X Prize’s two alternative contests, each of which carries a $2.5 million prize.

Like the mainstream X Prize competition, the alternative categories require the vehicles to achieve 100 miles per gallon. But the alternative vehicles must only be capable of achieving a 100-mile range, whereas the mainstream cars must have a 200-mile range.

Edison2’s two-seat Very Light Car, driven by Italian racing champion Emanuele Pirro, successfully met the 100-mile range benchmark Friday afternoon.

According to the X Prize’s fuel efficiency results, the team’s alternative class car recorded 109.1 miles per gallon of gas, combined city and highway mileage. Edison2 calculated the car’s highway mileage at 129.6 miles per gallon.

“This is the future of transportation,” Kuttner said. “It solves our problems.”

How do Edison2’s Very Light Cars reach such fuel mileage heights? A combination of low weight (they weigh less than 800 pounds) and high aerodynamics.

With less weight and drag, the vehicle requires less energy to go. The cars’ internal combustion engines run on E85, a mixture of gas and alcohol.

The mood Friday among the Edison2 crewmembers was at times tense, as the two mainstream cars performed 100 laps around the 2-mile speedway to demonstrate their range capabilities. The engine of one of the cars, driven by racecar driver Brad Jaeger, was overheating. On several occasions, Jaeger made a pit stop so members of Edison2 could quickly splash chilled water onto the car’s radiator, located at the rear of the vehicle.

As Jaeger approached for the second time, one Edison2 member wondered aloud if they could hook a hose up to a nearby fire hydrant to spray down the Very Light Car.

“No,” said Steve Wesoloski, the X Prize’s director of technical operations.

“You’re no fun,” replied the Edison2 pit crew member.

Kuttner added: “Actually we might blow the car away.”

Not long afterward, the team adjusted the car’s air intake valve and the temperature went back down to normal levels. While the team had to do penalty laps for taking the pit stops, it did not matter in the end because the laps could be performed outside the 200-mile range test’s 235-minute time limit and because the Very Light Cars have a range of far beyond 200 miles.

When the car finished the test, a mob of Edison2 team members, the media and the public ran out to cheer for Jaeger and the team’s successful performance.

“That was the big one,” Kuttner said, as he hugged Jaeger.

“We got it,” Jaeger said. “We got it in there.”

The X Prize Foundation announced late Friday the results of the first week of finals testing. Twelve teams started the week, but only eight remain in the running for the three X Prize categories.

Eliminated from the alternative class were the gas-fueled foam car called Spira; the electric Tango from Spokane, Wash.; the electric Amp from Blue Ash, Ohio; and an electric car made by Tata Motors of Coventry, England. The vehicles will still appear in next week’s events, but will not be eligible to win any of the prize money.

Left in the tandem alternative competition against Edison2’s two-seat Very Light Car are two motorcycle-like electric vehicles called X-Tracers from Switzerland. The X-Tracers run on two wheels and handle like motorcycles, but at slow speeds two small outrigger wheels pop out for stability.

“The motorcycle is the better piece of equipment,” Kuttner said. “But we’re racers. We don’t give up.”

When the winners of the three categories of the X Prizes are announced in Washington in September, it will mark the successful conclusion of the second X Prize. The first, the Ansari X Prize, awarded $10 million in 2004 to SpaceShipOne for building and launching the first private spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface twice within two weeks. Two other X Prizes are under way: the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize competition to send a privately funded robot to the moon and the $10 million Archon Genomics X Prize contest to sequence 100 genomes within 10 days or less for less than $10,000 per genome.

The point of the Automotive X Prize, Wesoloski said, is to break new ground in the auto industry and to inspire new innovations that will curtail the use of oil.

“What we’re trying to do here is set the future and set the next level of efficiency for the auto market,” he said.

One reporter asked Wesoloski if he thought the public would be interested in buying cars like the X Prize finalists, many of which appear dramatically different than traditional cars.

There was a time, Wesoloski replied, that minivans were seen as bizarre looking. Just a short while ago, Smart Cars — the microcars manufactured in Europe — were considered too strange for the American auto buying public, he added, but can now be seen on roads everywhere.

“Who is to say what tomorrow’s mainstream will be?” he said.

In Kuttner’s view, the Very Light Car will prove to be a hit. It will be affordable, safe, reliable, environmentally friendly and will cost less to operate than anything else on the market.

“This is one of those rare places where a better car is a cheaper car,” he said.

McNeill is a staff writer for The Daily Progress in Charlottesville.