Mini X Prize

Edison2 has learned that Randolph College – one of the top small colleges in the South, located here in Lynchburg, Virginia – is planning a class for next year on Green Engineering Design, with apparent X Prize influences. In fact, the lab for the proposed class is referred to as the Pinewood Derby on Steroids or The Mini-X-Car Competition, with guest lectures or field trips involving Edison2.

This lab/lecture class will look at the state-of-the-art in green engineering design, not just in transportation but in areas such as materials and energy production. The types of things we are doing at Edison2 – in efficiency, innovation and sustainability – need to become the norm in all industries.

This course is an important offering by Randolph College, and if we can provide a little inspiration to college students we are very pleased!

Does Bigger Mean Safer?

The Very Light Car is designed to be a highly efficient, very safe car. But an assumption many people make is that a small, lighter car is less safe and that a big, heavy SUV is more safe.

Wrong. In a 2004 New Yorker article Malcolm Gladwell completely demolishes, so to speak, this assumption. In Big and Bad: How the SUV ran over automobile safety he shows that while an SUV may be safer if you run head-on into something (“passive safety”), the problem is the trouble a heavy vehicle has in accident avoidance (“active safety”), ie, swerving and stopping. As he says, “The benefits of being nimble – of being in an automobile that’s capable of staying out of trouble ­– are in many cases greater than the benefits of being big.”

This concept is backed up by research: in An Analysis of Traffic Deaths by Vehicle Type and Model scientists from Michigan and Berkeley conclude “…utility vehicles (SUVs) are not necessarily safer for their drivers than cars; on average they are as risky as the average midsize or large car, and no safer than many of the most popular compact and subcompact models” and that “when one considers the combined risk, including those killed in the other vehicle in two-vehicle crashes, then the safest subcompact and compact models are actually safer than the average SUV”.

Perhaps the most interesting concept in Big and Bad is the importance of an awareness of your surroundings – and your own vulnerability – that comes with a small or normal-sized car, compared with the feeling of invulnerability an SUV conveys: “Jettas are safe because they make their drivers feel unsafe. S.U.V.s are unsafe because they make their drivers feel safe. That feeling of safety isn’t the solution; it’s the problem.”

More On The Competition

Our favorite X Prize team is the West Philly Hybrid X Team.

Probably everybody’s favorite is this team based at the West Philadelphia High School’s Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering, a public high school serving one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia. NBC’s Today Show, NPR, and Popular Mechanics are among many who have noticed this team. It would be easy to dismiss this team of high-schoolers as a Rocky-type Hollywood fable, going up against larger, better funded teams, except for one thing: their serious record of accomplishment.

The West Philly Team has built and raced alternative cars before. Their Hybrid Attack, a low-slung, aerodynamic sports car that can go from zero to 60 in 4 seconds and get 60 miles per gallon of bio-diesel, won the Tour de Sol (an alternative-fuel efficiency and performance competition) in 2005 and 2006, and in 2007 West Philly won the 21^st Century Automotive Challenge.

West Philly is one of three X Prize teams, including Edison2, entered in both the mainstream and alternative classes.

Their mainstream entry, the EVXb, is a parallel plug-in hybrid based on the Ford Focus chassis, powered by a two-cylinder 80 HP Harley-Davidson engine and a Azure dynamics electric motor. The alternative entry is the EVXd, a two-seater, diesel electric sports car based on the Factory Five GTM frame. The drivetrain is a VW TDI 1.9 liter engine, also with an Azure Dynamics electric motor. These entries are designed to demonstrate that a high-school team, using off-the-shelf technology can create vehicles that are safe, affordable, meet competition guidelines and can perhaps capture the X Prize.

Good luck to the team from the City of Brotherly Love!

The Impact Of Weight On Automobile Economy

At Edison2 we pursue low weight as the first of two virtues to maximize efficiency in the automobile; the second is low aerodynamic drag.

One economy that accompanies a move to low weight is in the cost of materials. Low weight means not only less materials used, and hence lower production costs, but also lower maintenance costs, such as for brakes and tires (and roads).

The greatest savings with low weight is in energy consumption while driving. These savings are a function of the aerodynamic and resistance drag and the actual weight of the vehicle. Other factors include type of road, drive cycle (stop-and-go vs. highway) and vehicle features, which can be negative (air conditioning) or potentially beneficial (regenerative braking).

A heavier car can regenerate more energy with braking than a light car, and of course the more often brakes are used the more chances there are to recapture energy. Hybrid systems are most effective for buses and delivery trucks, which are heavy and stop frequently. On the other hand, if a car is used with very few stops the regeneration system is only added weight.

Conventional cars have become really heavy. Partly this is due to the weight of equipment needed to meet emissions and safety requirements, partly it is due to feature creep – the weight of motors and brackets for fully adjustable seats, for example – and partly because weight begets weight. The size and stress put upon each component of a car is a function of the total weight of a car; this is obvious in the need for a more powerful engine or larger brakes in a heavier car but the concept applies to many other vehicle parts.

Therefore is harder to take weight out of a car than to design a new one; the Very Light Car is light because it is light.

The Competition

We are getting within reach of the actual race. We have our ideas about the competition but really do not know who has what. Our picks for the good ones? TW4XP, from Germany, or our friend Stefano with the tilt vehicle from Italy (TTW Italia). England has two significant offerings - the guys from Delta and the Tata team, with Jaguar power and engineering and certainly a real budget. Switzerland (X-Tracer) will show up with precision, count on it.

In the US, we all know about Aptera in California, of course. Lets not forget North Carolina, home to loads of racing talent and Team EVI. In the rainy Pacific Northwest Western Washington University has a car with Paul Allen sponsorship on it (think SpaceShipOne), and in cold Minnesota there is Chris Taylor and his ULV-3 team.

We tend to dismiss those who have entries based on production cars, but hey, who really knows.

There will be surprises, no doubt. This is a race that may plant the seed that changes the future of an industry and our nation - not to mention that it is a race for ten million dollars, perhaps the largest prize in motorsports history.

Here is a bit from Delta Motorsports, who may, we think, be our biggest competition…

Our car's really beginning to take shape now. This is the monocoque, almost complete, up at KS Composites. Kelvin (left) and Jamie Smith have put in a sterling effort to get us to this point, for which we're hugely grateful.

You've probably noticed they've got the chassis (& some of the aluminium front structure) in the air, which isn't a problem because it only weighs 55kg!

It's taken us a long time to get to this point, partly because of the effort we've put into the design of the car and the manufacture of the moulds, but also because we've been developing a production methodology that will allow us to manufacture this type of carbon composite structure much more cost-effectively in the future. Working closely with KS on the manufacturing side and also with Advanced Composites (ACG) who are developing the pre-preg fabrics, we believe there are huge opportunities to reduce weight and therefore energy consumption.

A great example of the sort of thing we (and our partners) can achieve by applying our motorsport philosophy into new arenas...

Visit the Progressive Automotive X Prize site for information on all the teams.