Audi quattro lunar-cy

As the race to become the world's first company to develop a fully autonomous car hots up, occupying much of the collective brains trust within the world's biggest car-makers, Audi has its eye on another prize – the Google Lunar XPRIZE.

The idea is simple: build a moon buggy, rocket blast it across 380,000km (236,000 miles) spanning five days that it takes to get to the moon, land it, then operate it. The lunar rovers must travel at least 500 metres and transmit images and video back to HQ.

Win, and you get $US30 million, or about $A43 million.

The deal requires all 16 teams, including the Audi-backed 'Part-Time Scientists', to fully develop a vehicle capable of operating in the extremes of vacuum, where the temperature can drop to absolute zero, or negative 273 degrees centigrade.

The quattro-branded lunar rover is considerably smaller and lighter than the baby of the Audi passenger-car range, the Audi TT. In fact the Labrador-sized moonwalker weighs just 35kg and accelerates from zero to a top speed of 3.6km/h in, well... a very, very long time.

But it has four wheels that can turn 360 degrees giving plenty of mobility.

To win, the team's budget must be 90 per cent privately funded (it's unclear whether Audi is fully funding the team) and it's not chump change to get something into space.

By Audi's own admission the Part-Time Scientists crew, which is based in Berlin and assisted by 10 additional Audi engineers, will need around €24 million or $A37 million to get the rover to the moon, where it will land just north of the moon's equator (not far from the 1972 Apollo 17 landing site).

Initially there were 34 teams vying for glory in the Google Lunar XPRIZE. Now there are just 16, and the Part-Time Scientists are certainly in with a chance, with a team of 70 experts including former NASA staff. Nvidia is also helping the team, as is the Technical University of Berlin, the German Aerospace Centre and the Austrian Space Forum.

Ironically, if the Audi-branded rover does win the $30 million XPRIZE, Google could effectively be funding one of its arch-rivals in the race to deliver the world's first autonomous car.