Travel the US on Six Gallons of Gas

I have a friend that is currently biking across the country. I get email updates from him telling me what
states he has crossed and where he is heading.

I like to bike, don’t get me wrong. But across the country? That’s roughly 3,000 miles. I wonder how many tanks of gas that takes? (I ask because one day I want to do said cross-country trip… in a car, of course).

Currently at MIT there is a Vehicle Design Summit taking place.

This summer from June through August 15th MIT will host 60
engineers from 15 different countries. Their goal is to build cars that get 500 Miles to the Gallon. Impossible, no. But improbably…. damm straight.

The students that organized the summit were inspired by the World Solar Challenge.

By re-thinking modern vehicle designs the student engineers, many of whom have won the World Solar Race in the past, are going to create a practical solution for drivers that is environmentally and economically friendly.

I wonder how a car could ever get 500 mpg and what would it look like? To my feeble mind it sounds like technology from another planet.

The designs are broken into the following categories: hydrogen fuel cells, photovoltaics, biofuels, and human power. Their
goal is to design a practical vehicle that gets 500 mpg. I talked to the organizers over the phone, hoping I could turn it into a story. Although I haven’t found a home for it yet, I did get this breakdown of the different categories of cars from the organizers.

Via Email from the coordinators:

—

1. Fuel Cell Vehicle:  Current fuel cell vehicles concentrate on existing car architecture, ignoring the unique design opportunities that an electric vehicle provides.  Our vehicle will have three wheels, and will be ultralighted using a variety of established, yet rarely used, technologies.
2. Biofuel Vehicle:  Biofuel is an extremely common green conversion today, yet the real innovation lies at other points in the supply chain.  Part of the mission of this vehicle is to raise awareness of important infrastructure changes that will be required to make biofuel a truly effective alternative to
   oil.
3. Assisted Human Power Vehicle (AHPV):  Merging two readily available sources of energy, the AHPV team is adding the power of the sun to mankind’s impressive ability to provide its own motive power.  Few people know that both solar cars and human powered vehicles can go at 50 mph when properly designed. With experts from both fields, this team expects to create a vehicle that is safe, practical, and fast enough for the open road.
4. Envision Team:  This team has bought a Honda Insight, and plans to convert
   it to prove that this well designed car can be done even better by completely removing the heavy internal combustion engine and converting it to a complete EV.
5. Pulse Team:  Electric vehicles have been most successful in the dense urban market, where their short (but rapidly increasing) range is mitigated next to the pressing need to reduce toxic emissions that can destroy a city’s air quality.  Pulse is concentrating on a car that will be tightly integrated into the beat of the street.

END EMAIL

Having talked to the organizers, I realize that a big part of the inspiration for this summit is related to the World Solar Challenge. The World Solar Challenge started as an attempt to create practical cars that ran on solar energy. While the challenge brings about new designs for cars every year, it has failed to create anything practical. Today it is just a side project for eager undergrads at prestigious universities. They don’t create vehicles that are useful outside of the WSR.

This summit is an admission of the failings of the World Solar Race. Three students at MIT got sponsorship and have brought in 60 engineers from all over the world to create just five cars. Sixty Engineers from 15 countries and 20 Universities working on five cars.

The teams come from Australia, Japan, South Africa, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Wales etc. That’s some real hands across the world type crap. The final designs will be public, not proprietary for the school or the sponsors (which include GM and
Ford).