Knockout Results

The knockout stage accomplished its goal and pared the X Prize field: the competition is now down from 21 teams and 26 vehicles to 12 teams and 15 vehicles. There are 8 vehicles left in the Alternative Side-by-Side class, 5 in the Alternative Tandem class and two in the Mainstream class.

The Alternative classes each come with a $2.5 M prize, and are less stringent than the Mainstream class. They require only a 100 mile range and 2 passengers; allow a slower 0 – 60 time, motorcycle tires and any number of wheels; and do not require features such as heat, air conditioning and audio. Edison2 has one car left in the Tandem class. The Mainstream class – $5 M prize, 4 wheels, 4 passengers, 200 mile range – is down to 2 cars: both are Edison2 Very Light Cars.

Our 3 remaining cars achieved combined MPGe (before penalties) of 101.4, 97.0 and 80.3: we feel we are well-positioned to meet the mileage and performance challenges of the finals.

The X Prize understands the importance of good handling to a safe and efficient car, and our cars aced the competition’s dynamic safety tests.

Edison2 had the top speed in the accident avoiding maneuver test (lane change). We had the shortest stopping distance in the 60 – 0 braking test, at 128 feet: 170 feet was the requirement.

We also bested the field in the lateral acceleration (skid pad) test, with our cars having the top three scores. For this test cars see how fast they can run in a 300’ diameter circle; our #97 mainstream car took 14.9 seconds to complete the circle, and achieved a 1.18g (g=acceleration due to gravity) peak reading, with 0.7g required. Compared with a car doing the minimum 0.7, our #97 would be 1.3 seconds and 75 feet ahead.

This is important: safety is achieved not just by performing well in a crash, but also by avoiding accidents altogether. The Very Light Cars are designed to meet both of these components of vehicle safety.

One of the cool things about these results is that Edison2's cars have the narrowest tires in the mainstream class. Unlike some of our competitors, we have not had to change them due to wear. Why are we able to combine grip, small size and low wear? Because the cars are Very Light.

Finals start July 19.



And Then There Were Two

A little over a year ago 111 teams from 15 countries, with a total of 136 vehicles, entered the Automotive X Prize. Close to two-thirds of the entries were in the mainstream class: 4-wheel, 4-person cars with a range of 200 miles on a single tank or charge.

Entering the 2^nd week of the knockout, only three mainstream cars remain: two Edison2 Very Light Cars and the electric Illuminati Seven car. More entries remain in the alternative classes (including our tandem Very Light Car), where entrants need to carry only 2 passengers, go 100 miles, and can have any number of wheels.

What does this mean?

Certainly it means that the X Prize has set the bar appropriately high. Doubling the mileage of existing high-economy cars is a very difficult task; if it were easy it would already have been done.

Second, the fact that only one car reliant on batteries remains in the mainstream class reinforces just how difficult range can be for electric drives. Our analysis of efficiency showed that the energy gained from regenerative braking simply was not worth the cost in added battery weight. One 6 lb gallon of gasoline contains the energy of 500 lbs of batteries; at least 1000 lbs of batteries would be needed if our 750 lb VLC were electric. That is a lot of weight to push around for 200 miles.

Third, it is no coincidence that both Illuminati and Edison2 have build ground-up cars. Achieving breakthrough efficiency by modifying an existing car is not going to happen; rather, it requires a new way of thinking about cars.

Edison2 has done this. We have met the 100 MPGe efficiency mark this week, and have done it by taking a fresh look at what it takes to make a car practical, safe, affordable, and efficient. The VLC is light because every part has been redesigned to be strong and light. It is safe because of design innovations from racing. It is affordable because it is low-mass, simple and uses conventional materials. And it is efficient because it is an unprecedented combination of low weight and superior aerodynamics.

Knockout continues this week with dynamic safety and emissions testing. Then the competition concludes the last 2 weeks of July, where cars need to meet the full requirements, rather than the 2/3 needed at Knockout. Stay tuned.



X Prize Knockout Stage 6/21/10

Edison2 cars and crew arrived Sunday at the Michigan International Speedway without incident and reasonably rested. Four cars, three trailers, 630 miles. While we were moving into the garages Sunday afternoon Popular Mechanics spent over two hours with two of our cars on a photo shoot; they are doing a story for the fall on the X Prize. Moving in went smoothly and two cars – the mainstream number 97 car and the alternative (tandem) number 95 – passed technical inspections yesterday without any significant problems. The other two cars go through inspections today and are in good shape.

On-track testing began yesterday for some of the alternative cars and starts for us tomorrow, with all 4 cars doing efficiency testing (city and urban cycles). At some points tomorrow we will have 2 cars on the track at the same time, both driven by professional endurance auto racing drivers – Brad Jaeger, who is also one of our engineers, and Emanuele Pirro, a five-time Le Mans winner.
It is interesting to see the variety of cars at the X Prize; many of them are new to us, since the April shakedown stage was conducted in two waves. A lot lies ahead for Edison2 and all the teams here. There is a spirit of camaraderie in the garages: a sense of how steep the challenge of the X Prize really is and acknowledgement of the hard work and ingenuity that has brought us together.

Media days begin tomorrow. This will be a very interesting week at MIS and should result in a lot of exposure for the competition and the teams. Edison2 has had some great stories lately, especially in the Charlottesville weekly paper The Hook and a radio story yesterday by WVTF in Roanoke; we look forward to more!



Breaking Our Addiction to Oil

A recent editorial by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times got our attention.

In This Time is Different, Mr. Friedman makes the point that on today’s most important issues, and especially those of the environment, it is time for individuals to step up and take responsibility. He quotes a letter to the editor in the SC Beaufort Gazette in which the writer accepts blame for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster:

“…It’s my fault because I haven’t digested the world’s in-your-face hints that maybe I ought to think about the future and change the unsustainable way I live my life. If the geopolitical, economic, and technological shifts of the 1990’s didn’t do it; if the terrorist attacks of September 11 didn’t do it; if the current economic crisis didn’t do it; perhaps this oil spill will be the catalyst for me, as a citizen, to wean myself off of my petroleum-based lifestyle”.

As Mr. Friedman points out, our thirst for oil led to drilling deep in the Gulf of Mexico – and “we expected them to take care, but when you’re drilling for oil beneath 5000 feet of water, stuff happens”.

This crisis is an opportunity. While we welcome the increased CAFE standards as a good step, the reality is it should not be up to the government to encourage us, as individuals, to live more efficiently. It really should be up each of us to make changes in our lifestyles: to drive less, with higher efficiency; to invest in our homes and cars to use less energy; and to demand from the marketplace sustainable choices.

More than anything else the Progressive Automotive X Prize is designed to show how high the bar for auto efficiency can be set, and act as a catalyst for dramatic and rapid change at a time when we can no longer afford incrementalism. Edison2 applauds the X Prize for bringing about this race for innovation and our competitors for their creativity, energy and hard work.

We can break our addition to petroleum, but to do so requires that we all take responsibility.



E85

For the X Prize the Very Light Car is powered by a one-cylinder, 250cc internal combustion engine running on E85. As the name implies, E85 is an 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline fuel blend.

To understand why we chose an internal combustion engine and E85, we need to explain why we did not chose a hybrid or electric drive. Our early studies on efficiency and the X Prize competition showed that car weight can be the main determinant of a vehicle’s energy consumption.  

With weight being of paramount importance, the energy content of gasoline vs. batteries comes into play. A 6-pound gallon of gasoline contains the energy of a 500lb battery. For the 200-mile range required by the X Prize for the mainstream class that translates into 1000 lbs of batteries. Our 4-seat mainstream entry weighs under 750 lbs, so the Very Light Car would more than double in weight if electric. That’s huge in terms of overall efficiency.

An electric car has to work extra to accelerate because of the added weight of batteries. All cars require less power to maintain highway speeds than to accelerate up to them, and this is especially true of electrics. An advantage of electrics is that the motor can be throttled back to cruise without losing efficiency.

A gasoline engine may accelerate more efficiently without the added weight of batteries, but when throttled back to cruise power it loses efficiency, because of internal friction and pumping losses.

Pumping losses led us to E85. Pumping losses come about at low load because the engine is trying to draw in a cylinder’s worth of air past a throttle that’s trying to stop it. Our solution for this inefficiency is to “throttle” the engine with exhaust gas recirculation. For practical purposes exhaust gas is inert, so if we send a cylinder full of exhaust gas and fresh air mix into the engine instead of a partial fill of fresh air only we can reduce power while also reducing pumping losses.

However, there is a limit to how much you can dilute the incoming fresh air with exhaust gas before the engine starts to misfire. E85 is significantly more tolerant of charge dilution than gasoline, allowing us to run the engine at close-to-peak efficiency at cruise power.

E85 has other attractive qualities. It (ethanol) runs cleaner than gasoline. It is renewable. As ethanol production moves from corn to cellulose-based sources ethanol becomes more energy efficient to produce and competes less with farmland.

As our last post noted, we are energy-source agnostic. The Very Light Car increases auto efficiency regardless of power source. But for the X Prize, at least, E85 makes a lot of sense.