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I CAME
across a Yahoo item this week about an American company
offering $10 million to teams that can produce a car
that can run 100 miles per gallon.
One US
gallon, according to Honda’s Arnel Doria, is equivalent
exactly to 3.78 liters.
The
American company made history a while back by dangling
lucrative cash prizes for space-flight promotions.
The
Yahoo item, datelined
New York,
read:
“The X
Prize Foundation, best known for its competitions
promoting space flights, is offering $10 million to the
teams that can produce the most production-ready
vehicles that get 100 miles per gallon or more.”
Production-ready. That means the competing car should,
more or less, be like your car presently sold in the
market, plying the streets of Metro Manila and the
highways of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
What
could that car be?
To be
exact once again, 100 miles is equivalent to 161
kilometers, according, once more, to Honda’s Arnel “Dr.
Einstein” Doria.
The
actual amount of the purse is expected to be announced
today, Friday (March 28), at the New York International
Auto Show.
If only
for that, the New York Auto Show should rank high among
the world’s motor shows, to include the five majors in
Tokyo, Paris, Detroit, Frankfurt and Geneva.
Already,
the report said more than 60 teams from nine countries
have signed up for the competition, including
California
electric carmakers Aptera Motors and Tesla Motors,
German diesel carmaker Loremo and a team from Cornell
University.
I wonder
if the world’s major car manufacturers like Honda, Ford,
General Motors, Chrysler, Volvo, Isuzu, Nissan,
Mitsubishi and Toyota would dare join the contest.
The
report did not say if the said car giants were qualified
or not.
Continued the report:
“British
Columbia-based Fuelvapor Technologies is among the
competitors. Vice president Todd Pratt said the
six-person company, which has funding from 47
shareholders, has spent more than two years developing
its car.
“The car
has three wheels and two seats and has the aerodynamic
design of a jet cockpit. It is gas-powered but saves
fuel through a proprietary technology that replaces
traditional fuel injection. The car currently gets 92
miles per gallon, Pratt said, but the company thinks a
hybrid version could achieve up to 400 miles per
gallon.”
So, if
the hybrid car could achieve up to 400 miles per gallon,
I’d say it would have the major edge over the field once
it enters the competition.
Any
comment from Toyota, whose Prius in 1997 was the first
commercially sold hybrid car in the world? Or Honda,
which has also developed its own hybrid vehicle?
Concluded the Yahoo item:
“The
Santa Monica, California-based X Prize Foundation, which
was founded in 1995, gained fame in 2004 when it awarded
$10 million to the first private vehicle to fly into
space. The foundation since has launched a $10-million
prize for rapid human-genome sequencing and a
$30-million prize for sending a robot to the moon.”
I will
closely monitor this contest by X Prize Foundation. You
should, too, fellas.
At the
rate the costs of the “black gold,” a.k.a. the fuel from
the Middle East, are going (at the last reckoning, a
barrel of oil cost a staggering $108!), we could be
thrown into a terrible crisis of global proportions
affecting our way of life socially, politically and
economically.
We must
all be concerned because if the winning vehicle would
prove strongly similar to the hybrid car, then the
number of days of vehicles’ dependence on fossil fuel
could be numbered.
It
wouldn’t be pure illusion now to think of a world soon
freed from the sickening shackles of oil, whose grip on
our daily existence is such that we’ve become slaves to
it for as long as humankind can remember.
Bravo to
the X Prize Foundation!
****
MY hat’s
off to David Lim of team DGL Racing, Jon Sarmiento of
Blanche Racing and W-Autosports/Vannitec’s Edward Pujol
for emerging winners in the recent 2008 Tommy Osmeña Cup
National Drag Racing Championships held at the South
Road Project (SRP) highway in Cebu City.
My good
friend Jon Develos of Mindanao Times reports that Lim,
onboard his Honda CRX, broke his previous record of
9.882 seconds to a 9.817-second finish, making him the
country’s fastest. He topped the Quick 8 Heads-Up Open
Class, beating Pujol in the finals.
Sarmiento now holds the PDRF’s fastest All-Motor record
by clocking 10.219 seconds at 131.96 kph, erasing team
RE’s10.701 seconds on his two-toned lightweight Honda
CRX.
Pujol
clocked the PDRF’s fastest SOHC at 11.370 seconds on his
Honda Civic Hatchback, eclipsing the previous best of
11.498 by teammate and lady driver When-When Dagondon. |
