Innovation

The leader in fostering innovation through competition, the nonprofit X PRIZE Foundation has launched the Automotive X PRIZE, awarding $10 million to teams that can design and build automobiles that achieve 100 MPG or its energy equivalent (MPGe) — cars actually capable of being mass-produced.

Best known for the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE, given to the first team to build and fly a private vehicle to space, the Automotive X PRIZE (AXP) will invite teams from around the world to focus on a single goal: design viable, clean and super-efficient cars that people want to buy. And achieving 100mpg is just the beginning – speed and reliability count too. In 2009 and 2010, the teams will compete in a long-distance road race in the US to test the vehicles in all sorts of real world conditions. Each of the cars will be sporting technology allowing Internet users to monitor the progress. The team with the fastest 100mpg car, measured by overall race time, will win the $10 million.

As The Independent recently put it: “The last time the automotive industry saw such a radical shake-up was when Henry Ford began mass-producing the Model T, a car that could achieve 25mpg.”

Sad to think 80 years later, average mpg hasn’t much improved. Let the revolution begin!