Green car competition opens minds
School team eyes the prize with Harley-electric hybrid powered Ford GT kitA team of high school kids has appeared with one of the more promising candidates for this year's prestigious Automotive X Prize for alternative automotive power.
Aimed at inspiring "a new generation of viable, super-efficient vehicles that help break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change", the competition's US$10 million prize pool has attracted 136 vehicle entries from 111 teams, using 14 different fuels.
They hail from a dozen countries, including 25 states within the US. Established automakers, emerging start-ups, universities and inventors are among those represented.
But it's West Philadelphia High School's Hybrid X Team's EVX GT sports car that's been grabbing the headlines. Not just as a bunch of high-schoolers from a disadvantaged area up against university engineering departments and Silicon Valley's finest, but for the elegance of the concept.
West Philly has run alternative fuel vehicle development projects for the last decade, with considerable success including wins in the prestigious National Tour de Sol in 2002, 2005 and 2006.
The rules are stringent by any stretch of the imagination: entrant vehicles have to be good for 100 mpg (2.35L/100km), with mass market levels of safety and reliability and viable for a minimum mass production threshold of 10,000 units.
West Philly has entered both the competition's streams, for mainstream and alternative vehicles. The mainstream EVX Focus is a stock Ford Focus sedan with what they call a "true flex" hybrid powertrain.
The car combines a 45kW Azure Dynamics electric motor powered by a 10.2kWh lithium iron phosphate (different from lithium ion) battery pack with a 60kW modified Harley-Davidson twin capable of running on any mix of petrol and biobutanol.
As well as fulfilling the competition's stringent emissions and fuel economy criteria, it boasts respectable performance figures for a small four-door sedan. With claimed range of 800-plus kilometres, it accelerates from 0-100km/h in "less than 9 seconds" and on to a top speed of "110+ mph" (around 180km/h).
But they've reserved the real performer for the alternative category. The EVX GT is a radical biodiesel hybrid take on Slovakian kit maker Factory Five's GTM, a Ford GT lookalike kit.
The EVX GT melds at the same electric motor and battery pack with VW TDI 1.9-litre engine in a mid-engine RWD chassis. Using the electric motor standalone for urban driving up to 80km/h, the EVX will easily exceed the competition's 100mpg equivalent requirements in the city cycle. Highway cycle is yet to be established.
It's also configured to make the most of the electric motor's instant application of full torque, getting it from 0-100 km/h in less than five seconds. Claiming a price around 40 per cent below that of a Tesla Roadster, they're pitching it as a budget alternative to market leaders like Chev's Corvette, BMWs and Porsches.
To the oil burner, they've fitted a particulates filter they say will see it easily meeting and bettering the competition's 125g/km CO2 requirements.
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