End of January Automotive X PRIZE Roundup

The X PRIZE Cars blog has has a lot of posts in the last couple days. Two of the posts concentrate on teams Tilting Vehicle Australia and the Open Source Society for Sustainable Mobility. The third is a big news roundup with links to all sorts of articles and videos. Some of it is on vehicles that aren't actually registered for the competition, but that lean towards the goals that the competition is designed to achieve.

There's also a link there to an article that says Ray Sidney (formerly from Google) made a big donation to the AXP. Here's a version from CNet. Last August the X PRIZE Foundation had a press release that included the following, which confirms a donation then (I don't know if the article refers that that donation or a later one):

The AXP has recently finalized a supporting sponsorship from Adobe. Other early AXP sponsors and donors include Idealab, Ray Sidney of Big George Ventures, the Elbaz Foundation, and the Jack D. Hidary Foundation. Once fundraising for the prize purse and administration is complete, the AXP will officially launch.

“We are seeking assistance from major foundations, corporations and philanthropic individuals to help bring about this revolution in transportation,” Diamandis said. “Visionary individuals and organizations have risen to this type of challenge before by backing the Ansari X PRIZE for personal spaceflight, and the Archon X PRIZE for Genomics. We’re confident we can build a financial base for this competition as well, and expect one or more heroes to rise to this challenge.”

There's also a post with a number of related articles, including some on Tesla, at Space for All.

One of the links at the Space for All post is on one of many potential developments in alcohol fuels. Somewhat related, Transterrestrial Musings has a post that's critical of the way Robert Zubrin promotes his flex fuel car mandate idea for E85 and M85 support for all cars sold in the U.S. Although I agree with Rand about Zubrin's over-the-top argumentation style, I'm still pretty convinced Zubrin has a good idea that would accomplish a lot with a minimum of government interference after reading his Energy Victory book. Of course I went into the book knowing ahead of time what style to expect, and I therefore had "all shields up" to counter that style.