Car of tomorrow: Kuttner’s 100 mpg vehicle still in X-Prize fight

A team led by Charlottesville real estate developer Oliver Kuttner has advanced in its quest to win the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X-Prize — an international race to build a car capable of traveling 100 miles on a single gallon of gas.

Kuttner and his Edison*2 team have been designing and assembling a prototype lightweight vehicle that they expect will be able to achieve 110 mpg in the city and 140 on the highway.

“We’ve made the cut,” Kuttner said, speaking via phone from an auto show in Las Vegas where his team and other X-Prize contenders were showcasing their designs. “It wasn’t a trivial event. We’re now in the group of teams allowed to compete. It’s pretty cool.”

Kuttner’s team of 30 engineers and designers is based out of a workshop in Lynchburg. Many of Edison*2’s members come from the professional auto racing industry.

Edison*2 — as in, a modern day version of the lab that invented the light bulb — was among 110 contenders from 25 states and 11 countries competing for the X-Prize, which will go to the team that designs a vehicle that can achieve 100 mpg and is viable for full-scale production.

More than half of the teams were cut in a recent qualifying round. Kuttner’s team is among the remaining 42 teams from 18 states and 10 countries still in the running. Edison*2 is the only team from Virginia.

Edison*2’s car is designed to be both highly aerodynamic and extremely lightweight, thereby reducing drastically its requirements for fuel. Despite its weight, Kuttner says, the vehicle will also be sturdy and meet all safety standards.

Kuttner believes his team’s car will be a “complete game-changer” that has the potential to not only capture the X-Prize, but also slash America’s reliance on foreign oil and revolutionize the future of transportation.

Beyond the X-Prize, Kuttner’s goal is to see the lightweight car mass- marketed and available for sale at around $15,000 apiece.

Kuttner and his team are keeping many of the car’s technical details a secret. They will not divulge specific weights and decline to say exactly what materials they are using.

Until a recent road test in the Shadwell area of Albemarle County, the team also would not allow photographs to be taken of the car.

The team gave permission for photos from that day’s test to be published today in The Daily Progress.

At last week’s Specialty Equipment Market Association auto show in Las Vegas, a full-sized model of the Edison*2 vehicle was parked near its fellow contenders, including a bright orange electric model called the “Wave 2” that was designed by a team out of Mooresville, N.C., and a three-wheeled electric car called the “Aptera 2e” out of Vista, Calif., that is anticipated to reach 300 mpg.

Edison*2’s floor model, which was titled the “Very Light Car,” was a stripped down design that merely showed off what the car’s aerodynamic exterior will look like once it’s finished.

Brad Jaeger, a professional racecar driver and one of Edison*2’s engineers, said his team’s car might not be the flashiest model at the show, but it attracted the attention of a steady stream of knowledgeable industry insiders.

“To quote our chief designer, Ron Mathis, we’re striking fear in the eyes of the other competitors,” Jaeger said. “They can see the potential of its shape. They see the potential of being light. They see what we can do.”

Several more hurdles remain in the X-Prize competition, with the next technical review slated for mid-December. A final winner is expected to be chosen in spring 2010.

“We’re definitely feeling good about our chances,” Jaeger said. “But it’s not going to be easy.”

As the final rounds approach, Kuttner has invited all of the foreign teams to operate out of his facilities in Lynchburg.

U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy, who arranged a meeting between Kuttner and U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu about the project, praised Edison*2’s progress in the X-Prize competition.

“There’s incredible clean-energy innovation coming out of research universities and small entrepreneurs across Central and Southern Virginia,” Perriello said. “Our area can be on the cutting edge of this new economic sector and we can out-compete other parts of the country and the world if we invest in innovation instead of continuing to reward failure. I congratulate Mr. Kuttner on making it to this level in this extraordinary competition.”