NEW YORK CITY, N.Y. – One hundred eleven teams fielding 136 vehicles have gotten the green flag to compete for a $10 million purse in the Progressive Automotive X Prize contest to build a production-ready, super-efficient vehicle that can travel more than 100 miles on a gallon of fuel.
The teams, which were announced yesterday, range from Alterna, Aptera and Avion to Tata, Tesla, TTW Italia, and the amusingly named, little-known 7K Hamsters of Roswell, New Mexico. They come from 11 countries and those in the U.S. hail from 25 states. The teams include universities, inventors and six teams whose identities are confidential. A list of the non-confidential entrants is available here (pdf).
"We're not talking about concept cars, we're talking about real cars that can be brought to market in the near term, that consumers will want to buy, said Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation in a news conference.
The 136 vehicles are powered by 14 fuel sources from battery power and seven different types of hybrid electric power to water and vegetable oil. The photo above shows one of the entries. The video below from contest organizers shows several more.
The first phase of the competition is design judging. The models that pass will go on to a performance test phase. The winner will be announced in May 2010.
The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE team will be at the New York Auto Show today and will be blogging live about the contest and the teams approved for the competition from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. tomorrow at www.progressiveautoxprize.org.
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