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" Washington, D.C.\u2014 At the Washington, D.C., award ceremony announcing the official winners of the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize competition to produce pioneering fuel-efficient vehicles a parade of politicians hogged the microphone interminably, praising and thanking one another and invoking the name Obama far more frequently than the name X Prize. They were nevertheless outshone by the three winning cars and the long-suffering, hardworking teams of engineers and mechanics who built and drove the cars to their victories. The Edison2 Very Light Car won the $5 million prize for a mainsteam model, with a gas mileage rating of 102.5 mpg, while the Li-ion Motors Wave II was the alternative side-by-side category winner of $2.5 million at 187 MPG equivalent and the X-Tracer E-Tracer motorcycle won the alternative tandem category&amp;#039;s $2.5 million with a score of 187 MPGe. Automotive X Prize organizers referred to the amount of energy in a gallon of gas as the standard and measured non-gas-powered cars by the amount of energy they used that is equivalent to gallons of gas. The mainstream category mandated a four-wheel, four-seat vehicle with 10 cubic feet of luggage space, has a 200-mile driving range, accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in under 15 seconds, and which includes consumer-mandated features such as heat, air conditioning and an audio system. &amp;quot;I could get in that car right now and drive it to Florida,&amp;quot; boasts Edison2 CEO Oliver Kuttner. He also insisted that at six feet four and 250 pounds, he could fit in all four of the Very Light Car&amp;#039;s seats. Consumer Reports&amp;#039; director of the auto test division, David Champion, who is significantly smaller than Kuttner, reported from his experience as an X Prize test driver that the Edison2 has challenging ingress and egress. But he was thoroughly impressed with the team&amp;#039;s attention to minimizing frictional and aerodynamic drag losses. &amp;quot;It can be pushed with one finger,&amp;quot; Champion says. That&amp;#039;s because the car requires a scant 8 pounds of force to roll forward, and a paltry 3.5 hp to go 50 mph on level ground. &amp;quot;Our car gets essentially the same miles per gallon whether you are going 40, 50, 60 or 70 miles per hour,&amp;quot; Kuttner says. Edison2 selected a conventional 40-hp, 250-cc, single-cylinder Yamaha motorcycle engine to provide the motive force because the engine is cheap, light and uses commonly available fuel, which is why the Very Light Car could realistically set off on a cross-country drive. But that doesn&amp;#039;t mean that future versions couldn&amp;#039;t use a more exotic powertrain. &amp;quot;Our car is a fuel-source agnostic platform,&amp;quot; Kuttner says. For the purposes of the contest&amp;#039;s greenhouse gas calculations the Very Light Car burned E85 ethanol rather than gasoline.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not for or against electric cars,&amp;quot; Kuttner says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m for more efficient cars. Our car is a whole new philosophy of a car, and it is the philosophy of the car that makes it light, not just because we took content out. You have to look at the car as a system.&amp;quot; This approach yielded a feathery 840-pound curb weight, achieved not with costly carbon fiber construction, but with a steel space frame that looks familiar to any racer of small-bore formula racing cars. The wheels also stand apart from the body like those on a formula car, but they are enclosed for reduced drag. This approach improves crash safety, according to Kuttner. In an offset frontal crash test, the car would deflect off the target car. &amp;quot;It would rip off the wheels, then you would go for a harrowing ride, get out and dust off,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;I really feel very safe in the car because of the light weight and the strong structure,&amp;quot; says Emanuele Pirro, five-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. While the Edison2 and X-Tracer entries were the only contestants in their categories to survive all the rounds of testing, the factor that separated winning entries from the best of the others was the teams&amp;#039; skills at systems integration, says Bob Larsen, a senior adviser to the X Prize group. Engineering choices such as battery selection, matching of the charger to the batteries, and thermal management were all examples of the issues that were handled more skillfully by the top finishers than the others, he explains. Batteries were not an issue for the Edison2 team, but both the alternative class winners are electric powered. The Li-ion Wave II, aka &amp;quot;the Frog,&amp;quot; features a 25.8 KWh prismatic lithium polymer battery pack mated to an AC-24-LS electric motor, which combine to propel the car as far as 250 miles on a charge. The pack recharges in 8 hours on 110-volt current. Although the two-seat Wave II has a fully enclosed body, underneath lies a steel space frame much like that of the Edison2. The curvy body slices though the air with an amazing 0.157 coefficient of drag.  Each finalist demonstrated worthy advancements, says Ron Cerven, Li-ion team leader. &amp;quot;There isn&amp;#039;t a bad vehicle here. Every one of them has aspects in it that will move the industry forward.&amp;quot; The Li-ion team is working to build 10 Wave II cars for road use and is developing a sports car, too. But the company isn&amp;#039;t interested in mass production, preferring instead to license its know-how to carmakers that have not yet invested in the research and development to learn these lessons for themselves. The X-Tracer team built its vehicle from an existing small-volume production machine called the monoTracer, replacing its BMW motorcycle engine with a battery electric drive. Now the company plans to offer the electric version for sale also. &amp;quot;Next year you will be able to buy an exact copy of this vehicle,&amp;quot; says team leader Roger Riedener.  This victory will aid sales by confirming the company&amp;#039;s claims about its products, he says: &amp;quot;X Prize offered us the opportunity to prove our claims were not just claims, but verifiable facts.&amp;quot; But that doesn&amp;#039;t mean X-Tracer aspires to mass production, because, as Riedener explains, &amp;quot;we are just a small company.&amp;quot;  Riedener also paid tribute to the esprit de corps of his colleagues and competitors, who pulled together to help one another through the ordeal of X Prize testing. &amp;quot;The spirit in the garage was really tremendous. These people were all eager to learn, even though they knew how to build a really good car themselves.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a6088/how-the-mpg-busting-x-prize-finalists-won/>