Sen. McCain offers $300 million prize for new auto battery

[loco]

June 23, 2008

PHOENIX - John McCain hopes to solve the country's energy crisis with cold hard cash.
 
The presumed Republican nominee is proposing a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, "a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency," McCain said in remarks prepared for delivery Monday at Fresno State University in California.

McCain said such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have "the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars."...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_energy

McCain needs to rent and watch the 2006 documentary  "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

[240 is Back]

awesome idea!!!!

[Bindare_Dundat]

Verbal diarrhea.

[Hugo Chavez]

it's not the solution. but I did recently build a cool little battery.  It lasts a few months, can be recharged for about 4 bucks.  is 120 volts 3amps and you can set it to whatever volt/amp ratio you need so I can set it for 12v and whatever amp that goes up to.  The cool thing is it's about 1/3 the size of a car battery and very lightweight.  probably about 10lbs if even that.  I do already have a better version designed and will make that here pretty soon.  The cells in my first one were a bit tight so I came up with another route to go making it easier to access.

But like I said, not the solution.  Something really cool is coming

[BayGBM]

I proposed a variation on this idea several years ago, but no one would listen to me.  I thought of it one day while watching the Daytona 500. 

Sponsor a contest with a million dollar prize for five years.  Different engineering teams can enter the race with any street legal production car.  The main requirement would be they must modify the car’s propulsion system so that it does not run on gasoline.  It can run on water, solar, electric, hydrogen, or some combination.  The winner of the 500 lap race wins the million dollars.  Anyone can enter the race but the primary entrants would be engineering teams from various colleges and universities: Cal Tech, MIT, FL inst. of Technology, Georgia Tech, Univ. of Maryland, etc.

At the end of the race the winning technology is shared with all the teams.  To win in subsequent years, the team must better the time and technology of last year’s winner.  In five years or less we would have cars and SUVs that do not run on gasoline.

College kids and graduate students are a better audience for this type of contest because they are not handicapped by assumptions about what can and can’t be done; they are more creative and energetic.

[a_joker10]

http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/index.php?q=auto
On March 20th at the New York International Auto Show, the X PRIZE Foundation and Progressive Insurance jointly announced the $10 million dollar Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE. "Let the race begin!" said X PRIZE Chairman and CEO Dr. Peter Diamandis. Complete details here.

People love their cars. They are vital links to our jobs, our community, ourselves. For everything we love about them, cars are chained to the most severe global crises of our time: oil dependence and climate change.

Through an exciting partnership with Progressive Insurance, the newly renamed Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE invites teams from around the world to focus on a single goal: design viable, clean and super-efficient cars that people want to buy.

This will be a race for the ages, with major publicity and $10 million waiting for the champions… and perhaps our future hanging in the balance.

http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/files/downloads/auto/AXP_Draft_Competition_Guidelines_20070402.pdf