By Paul Eisenstein
Race to 100 MPG
The disastrous blow-out of BP’s well in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to have a devastating, long-term impact on everything from marine life to the region’s tourist industry. If there’s an upside to the murk of spilled crude it’s the way the catastrophe is putting a renewed spotlight on the nation’s dependence on petroleum, whether imported or domestic.
“We are concentrated on a single source of energy,” says Eric Cahill, an energy researcher and now the senior director of the Auto X-Prize, but whether you believe in global warming, worry about the cost of importing crude or simply fear the potential for more disasters like the BP spill, there is increasing pressure to find alternatives to that primary energy source. Nowhere is that more visible than in the auto industry, where the strain on the global oil supply is already apparent.
In the U.S., the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standard was recently raised 30 percent, and is set to reach 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. Skeptics contend that increase could add significantly to the cost of the typical automobile, perhaps as much as $9,000, according to a new report by the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Science.
But not everyone buys that argument. And that includes the organizers of what is now known as the Progressive Auto X-Prize. Formally unveiled at the 2008 New York Auto Show, it’s a follow-up to the original Ansari X-Prize that helped spur the first private sub-orbital spaceflight in 2004. But its roots go even deeper, says Cahill, back to the early days of aviation, when the Orteig Prize helped spur Charles Lindbergh to make the first successful solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.
