A few months ago, three teams split $10 million in prizes, finally claiming the Progressive Insurance Automotive X prize. They’re all during CES, and we got a possibility to verbalize in detail with a single of a group behind one of them, Edison2′s Oliver Kutter, about the pattern of the car as well as, in conclusion, what’s starting to come next thanks to which $5 million in money a association walked away with. Read upon for a details from which conversation, including because this little thing could essentially be safer than the traditional car, as good as the video walkthrough, as well as pictures of the winner of the two-wheeled X-Tracer too.
Automotive X-Prize winners

The Very Light Car reasonably weighs a couple of ticks over 800lbs as well as is powered by a 250cc motorcycle engine (the same a single used in the funky little Yamaha WR250X). That might not sound similar to a lot of power, and in truth it isn’t, but the thought here is of course efficiency. The team managed 102mpg during a competition, though have elsewhere scored 109, as well as that’s only a beginning.

This is the third iteration of the automobile, and a association is already tough during work on a fourth, with electric energy coming. That won’t be a end, though, with more revisions to be done and, hopefully, a manufacture chronicle that could, hold it or not, seat seven. Part of the reason because it has so most room is because the suspension is wholly built into a wheels, the blueprint we unfortunately weren’t allowed to see (it’s hidden under a white pieces of paper) but enables a axle to be completely rigid as well as the interior to widen right to the corners of the body.

If your first thought is that this layout plus the tiny, low-rolling-resistance tires give it crummy doing, hope for to be humbled: the VLC pulled 1.18g upon a skidpad, relating a $300,000+ Pagani Zonda C12 S. If your second thought is which it’s the deathtrap, we’ll be happy to inhibit that too. It’s done of co fiber, for one thing, which is incredibly tough to damage. For another, the diamond figure gives it implausible acerbity from possibly frontal or side impacts. Finally, a chain of a wheels and tires outside of the body means they can be shed in a pile-up — throwing off kinetic energy and reducing a overall force of the pile-up.

Ultimately a Virginia-based company is still the ways away from the chronicle which you or I can try to go break the own annals in, though with the fleet of gifted racing engineers fiddling with CAD files and laying up the carbon we’d like to think good things have been entrance. But, afterwards, we are optimists.

Via Engadget

We’re large fans of private entities giving divided big chunks of money to account cold research, as well as a X Prize substructure seems to be creation a most waves newly. Most new is a Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a $10 million sum purse going to cars means to score during least an homogeneous MPG of 100. There were two main classes as well as 3 sum prizes, all of that recently found winners. Besting them all was a Team Edison2 Very Light Car, taking home $5 million interjection to the four-passenger pattern clocking in at 102.5MPGe using upon E85 ethanol. There were additionally two “alternative” winners, any scoring $2.5 million: Team Li-On’s two-seater Wave-II EV (187MPGe) as well as Team X-Tracer Switzerland’s E-Tracer, an overwhelming as well as electric two-wheeled enclosed motorcycle with auto-deploying outrigger wheels. That fool, graphic above, managed 205.3MPGe and will do 0 – 60 in under seven seconds, something which certainly can’t be pronounced of the rest. But, nothing of them have been just what you’d call four star safety rated nor can any be found upon play lots. In other difference: it stays to be seen when mere mortal commuters will get to be the winners of this competition.

Via Engadget

This week Inhabitat saw a world’s first solar-powered aircraft soar by a night sky as it successfully finished its initial 24-hour moody. We additionally took the look at a 15 ultra-efficient cars currently opposed for a Progressive Automotive X Prize. Electric vehicles additionally done the headlines left and right this week as Korean carmarker CT&T announced plans to produce EVs in South Carolina as well as California rolls out skeleton for the whopping 1,600 charging stations.

Heatwaves swept a states this week, though you found some condolence in the contentment of sunshine as Obama denounced plans to kick-start a US solar industry with a $2 billion investment. We also looked during a sleek as well as in vogue solar powered bag as well as an advanced solar cell manufacturing technique which promises to boost the efficiency of skinny film photovoltaic cells by the fourth. Wind power additionally made waves as plans were strictly denounced for the United States’ initial freshwater wind plantation in Lake Erie.

Finally, this week we saw several conspicuous advancements from the margin of biotechnology, starting with an extraordinary new wound dressing that harnesses nanotechnology to detect as well as treat infections prior to they set upon. And from a desk of strange-yet-true comes one architect’s devise to create the unpractical home wholly from beef cells grown in the lab!