Super-efficient cars (and Google)

Imagine a world where super-efficient cars are desirable, affordable and everywhere…

where gasoline no longer makes history, but is history…

This call to imagination is featured on the home page of the Progressive Automotive X-Prize website. While gasoline is clearly not yet a thing of the past, fuel prices, fierce competition in the automotive sector and growing awareness and concern about global warming have contributed to innovations and developments in hybrid vehicle design and manufacturing that may mark a beginning of the end.

One leading example is Aptera Motors, a top prize contender in the ‘alternative’ category for the Automotive X-Prize. Aptera, has received around 4000 refundable deposits for its vehicles as of August 2008. The California based company expects to delivering first units to customers in December 2008. (The timing is perfect for an Asian showing at the Future of Transportation Forum held at UltraFuture Expo in Hong Kong, December 10-13.)

Aptera’s first vehicles to market will be based on the design and prototype model ‘Typ-1′. The Typ-1 is a two seater, three-wheeled vehicle - two front wheels steer, and the rear wheel is driven by the electric motor. The super-streamlined vehicle achieves takes advantage of its low drag co-efficent to achieve gas mileage of 230-300 miles per gallon at 55mph (89 km/h). In December 2007, Aptera founder Steve Fambro mentioned “Project X,” a four-wheeled five-passenger model. In March of this year, Fambro again suggested the company has “other projects that are certainly more mainstream” in the pipeline.

Interestingly, in July 2008 Google.org (the philanthropic arm of the search-engine giant and sponsor of the Lunar X-Prize) invested US$2.75 million in Aptera.