California Congressman proposes $1 billion prize for 100 mpg car
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What would you pay for a car that gets 100 mpg?
$20,000?
$50,000?
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How about $1,000,000,000?
Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., has introduced a bill in Congress offering a billion-dollar prize to the first automaker that builds and sells 60,000 mid-size cars capable of delivering 100 mpg.
The so-called “E-Prize Act of 2012” (H.R. 3872) is modeled after government-backed innovation incentive contests like the DARPA Grand Challenge, which paid million-dollar prizes to private entities for successfully creating fully-autonomous vehicles, with an eye on developing the technology for use by the military.
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The program proposed by Lungren’s bill would be run by the Department of Energy as an alternative to current schemes that offer up-front matching funds and loans to automakers to develop high-mileage cars based on speculative sales projections, rather than proven success in the marketplace.
But there’s a catch.
While the Nissan Leaf battery-powered car is already rated at the equivalent of 99 mpg, Lungren’s bill requires that the car that claims the prize runs on gasoline and is built by a company incorporated in the United States. This would apparently also disqualify plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt and upcoming Ford Fusion Energi.
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No U.S. automaker is known to be close to producing a car that would qualify for the E-Prize as proposed, but Virginia-based startup Edison2 recently won the similar, privately-funded $5 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize with its 102.5 mpg Very Light Car.
Although not quite a mid-size car in its existing form, Edison2 says it plans to develop the ultra-aerodynamic 830-pound four-seat prototype for production and hopes to license its technology to an established manufacturer.
Anyone out there willing to make a $1 billion bet?
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