The BIGGEST Prize yet!!!

[botsapper]

The X-Prize is negligible compared to this huge carrot. California Congressman Dan Lundgren -R drafted a bill to reward a company to build & sell a car that gets a 100mpg with a (pinky @ corner of the mouth)...BILLION dollar prize!
The 'Excellence in Energy Efficiency Act of 2012' is a R-party's counter strategy against D-party's highly subsidized projects for hybrids & alternative vehicles.
The design criteria has a nationalistic bent, that it must be developed & built in the US. It must be a multi-passenger sedan. And it must run on dino-juice, gasoline, refiners love that. So fuel/EV hybrids is still heavily considered. Wonder if many Fed vehicles safety standards are waived to achieve this massive engineering goal.
EM'ers got a head start on the brainstorming, so let's start sketching on those drink napkins & warm up those keyboards/mice/styluses.

Republican bill would award $1 billion for 100mpg midsize sedan

[botsapper]

...pardons...should have started the thread in the Unicorn Corral?

[Frank Lee]

Oh for Pete's sake. The govt already spent a billion on PNGV. Grab the three PNGV final prototypes, cut a wee bit of frontal area out (cuz they were a bit bigger than this calls for and didn't quite make it to 100 mpg) and ramp up the production lines!

[ProDarwin]

Is that MPG or MPGe?

This is an interesting counter-strategy.

[botsapper]

PNGV protos got 70's-80's mpg too. Gave us diesel-EVs, new lightweight alloy/composites, after-treatment devices, new-gen power electronics, etc.

What happened to USCAR, Japan's ACE, UK's Foresight, IMI SALVO 4 and EU's Car of Tomorrow guv'ment projects?

Globalization is both an opportunity but also a huge obstacle. Different regions are developing at different rates with different technologies as well as different safety requirements. Winners of this prize could dictate a 'global' vehicle design standard and enjoy an instant & huge market share, but the disparity of technology accessibility in the various markets are just too wide.
The billion is most likely not enough.