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" Brooklyn, MI \u2013 During the Automotive X Prize&amp;#039;s second &amp;quot;Shakedown&amp;quot; week at Michigan International Speedway (MIS), the gathered teams all seemed to be hitting the point of exhaustion at the same time. By mid-afternoon on Thursday, every eye looked like it was rubbed red, the normal garage chatter had spun down into prolonged yawns, and purposeful strides had given way to head-down shuffles. The goal may be to produce a realistic car that can perform at the equivalent of 100 mpg, but this grueling contest is as much a measure of each team&amp;#039;s human endurance and determination as it is of their vehicles&amp;#039; mechanical abilities. There is $10 million in prizes at stake, but no one in the garages was talking money. This contest long ago stopped being about money. Or at least it was never only about money. About half the 28 X Prize teams were tested at the end of April, and the other half were here in early May. As before, there was a mix of vehicles entered in both the &amp;quot;mainstream&amp;quot; (four wheels and four passengers) and &amp;quot;alternative&amp;quot; (not four wheels, and just two passengers) divisions. And again the entries ranged from cars that are nearly ready for production to home-brewed machines that could have been exhibited as abstract art. Conspicuously missing from the mix were General Motors&amp;#039; upcoming Chevrolet Volt serial hybrid, Nissan&amp;#039;s Leaf all-electric car or any entry from an established large manufacturer. The X Prize organizers invited them to compete and even considered establishing a &amp;quot;demonstration&amp;quot; division just for them, but none took the bait. And, after all, even $10 million is but a drop in their developmental budgets&amp;#039; very large buckets. The second batch ran the same tests as the first, including acceleration, braking, emergency lane change maneuver, emissions and an hour-long drive on a short road course along the MIS property&amp;#039;s boundaries. However, while those tests are daunting in themselves, the real challenge laid in the scrutiny applied to each car by the X Prize judges. And virtually all those judges were veteran engineers who each had decades of experience shepherding cars into production for Detroit manufacturers. &amp;quot;These aren&amp;#039;t major OEMs,&amp;quot; X Prize Technical Director Steve Wesoloski explained. &amp;quot;These are entrepreneurs that are working hard in their own garage.&amp;quot; The Shakedown gives all the teams a chance to see where they stand and still have time to go back and tweak their prototypes in anticipation of June&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Knockout&amp;quot; round, where the field will be aggressively thinned. &amp;quot;So we wanted to give them that six-week window between now and the Knockout qualifier,&amp;quot; Wesoloski said. &amp;quot;And then post-Knockout, they&amp;#039;ll have some time to go back and change their calibration again. Because the requirement at Knockout is only 67-mpg equivalent to be able to pass on to the finals.&amp;quot; The nerve-wracking inspections took hours. &amp;quot;A lot of these guys didn&amp;#039;t know what to expect,&amp;quot; one inspector told us (though he wasn&amp;#039;t authorized to speak for the X Prize team). &amp;quot;And because of that, it took a lot longer than, say, an inspection that would have taken place with experienced OEM engineers.&amp;quot; Team FourSight, for instance, found itself cramming to get their two-seat electric ready for inspection. While the chassis was more or less ready, the body wasn&amp;#039;t yet secured to the chassis, and the rearward seat looked more like a hammock than a conventional automotive throne. &amp;quot;We came here expecting, I don&amp;#039;t know, some understanding,&amp;quot; said Team FourSight&amp;#039;s Chris Beebe after his team had failed the inspection. By the end of the day, Team FourSight was working together on an appeal of the X Prize technical team&amp;#039;s decision to dismiss them from the competition. &amp;quot;Last year was tough for me, like it was for a lot of people,&amp;quot; Beebe sighed as he sat down to work on some technical drawings for his appeal. &amp;quot;My business has suffered during the 18 months I&amp;#039;ve dedicated to this.&amp;quot; While all the vehicles varied in how they were engineered, at some level they were all conservative designs. None of the designs featured exotic technologies or stunning breakthroughs. How they differed was in their strategies for optimizing existing designs to get the most out of their drivetrains. Spira, from Thailand, for instance kept the weight of its tiny tugboat-looking two-seater down by constructing much of it from foam. But its engine was simply a 250-cc motorcycle engine. The team from Cornell University used the chassis of a small Japanese-market Subaru truck and the narrowed body of a 2002 Honda Civic. But the serial hybrid system incorporated an off-the-shelf three-cylinder diesel engine out of a VW Polo. Finland&amp;#039;s RaceAbout Association brought a sleek two-seat sportster that, with its big rear-mounted electric motors, and suspension swiped from an Audi R8, seemed ready to challenge Lamborghinis rather than push past the 100-mpg goal. Meanwhile the X-Tracer Team had an aggressive enclosed motorcycle that used outrigger wheels that dropped down at low speeds and looked like it was ripped out of Tron.  RaceAbout&amp;#039;s two-seat sportster. Cars that seemed like locks to make it through the on-track events easily sometimes stumbled. Amp Motors, for instance, brought a Saturn Sky converted for electric propulsion. But the conversion&amp;#039;s additional weight strained the unchanged suspension and the two-seater spun several times going through the lane-change test before achieving the required 45-mph speed.   Amp Motors&amp;#039; converted Saturn Sky. The electrified (in Britain) version of the Indian-built Tata is likely to be a dark-horse challenger for the X Prize. It looks utterly boring\u2014a box on wheels\u2014but it seemed to be performing effortlessly.  Tata Motor&amp;#039;s all-electric entry. Meanwhile some of the cars that looked like they weren&amp;#039;t even finished went unchallenged. FVT Racing&amp;#039;s eVaro series hybrid may have been finished in gray primer, but it got through most of the tests with no drama.  FVT&amp;#039;s eVaro series hybrid. Zap Electric Vehicles entered its neat looking &amp;quot;Alias&amp;quot; three-wheeler, and brought Al Unser Jr. along to drive it. When you have an Indy winner at the wheel, apparently it&amp;#039;s easier to get through the tests. More generally appreciated was Zap&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;spokesperson,&amp;quot; Keiko, who wore the shortest skirt and highest heels in the garage. If nothing else, Zap proved that showmanship won&amp;#039;t die, even when the last drop of oil is burned.  Zap Electric&amp;#039;s Alias three-wheeler. Sportsmanship has a future too. As the Shakedown days were ending, Team EVI&amp;#039;s radical and very green Wave II electric vehicle was in need of a new systems controller. As we left, Zap had loaned them their spare controller and was helping install it.  Team EVI&amp;#039;s Wave II. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a5768/shakedown-inspection-day/>