The race to create a more fuel-efficient vehicle

Exciting news from our neighbors in Santa Monica, the X Prize Foundation. If you aren’t already familiar with them, the X-Prize Foundation “creates and manages prizes that drive innovators to solve some of the greatest challenges facing the world today.” They do this by staging competitions, offering large monetary rewards for winners in categories that include aerospace technology, genomics, and now, automotive innovation.

According to their press kit, the goal of the Automotive X Prize is: “To inspire a new generation of viable, super-efficient vehicles that help break our addiction to oil and stem the effects of climate change.”

The grand prize will be awarded to the teams that “win a stage race for clean, production-capable vehicles that exceed 100 MPG equivalent fuel economy.”

So far, more than forty teams in five different countries have signed up for the challenge. The competition will take place in stages that will culminate sometime in late 2009.

If you’d like more detailed information on the Automotive X Prize or the X Prize Foundation, you can visit their web site at http://www.xprize.org.