Comments to the Automotive X-Prize Rules

Posted by David Lee
April 10, 2007

[SSM’s notes: The comments here are referring to the Draft Competition Guideline posted by the X-Prize Foundation on April 02, 2007. Our Mechanical Engineering Specialist, Bill, and I attended (via teleconference) the Automotive X-Prize kick-off meeting at CalTech and had reviewed the draft rules in detailed and posted our comments online.

Before we start, I would like to thank the guys at X Prize Foundation. The effort required to come this far is just phenomenal. The comments here might sound harsh but we would like to make sure this is a fair-enough competition that will be worth investing several million dollars in. We are looking forward to their next draft.]

General Comments

These comments are applicable to all pages in the document.

The rules favor big automakers (especially American automakers). See below
Please use/include metric unit equivalent of all quantifiable requirements. E.g. instead of MPG, please indicate MJ/km also. As the United States is the only country in the world that still uses English units.
Use the word “shall” instead of “must” or “will” for requirements. I suggest you produce a vehicle requirement document to separate these requirements from the rules.
Move the track/course design requirements into a separate document.
Clarify ambiguous requirements as much as possible. For subjective statements (e.g. interior comfort, vehicle image, etc.), Give examples using vehicles that are currently in production.

Specific Comments

Page 6: The registration fee of $5000 per vehicle is too high for small businesses
and not enough for big car companies. To “level” the play field, I suggest that:

a. Have a separate classification for small businesses, nonprofits and individuals (“small entities” herein).

b. Make the per-vehicle registration fee […] exponentially more expensive such as:
i.       1st vehicle: $5,000
ii.      2nd vehicle: $50,000
iii.     3rd vehicle: $500,000
iv.     4th vehicle: $5,000,000
v.      5th vehicle: $50,000,000
Have you ever played darts with a blind person? If the blind guy has 1000 darts, he is more likely to hit the bull’s eye than I am with only one dart.

The reason I said that is because the specifications of the “stages” are supposedly released only right before the race. If that is true (which I doubt, see below), just assume that is true, there is no way to optimize a vehicle for a specific stage before hand. Then it’s like
throwing darts, whoever has the most darts wins.
How do guarantee the secrecy of the track/stage specifications? On one hand, you said the specification will not be known to any teams prior to the race but yet you mentioned that on Page 25 you are saying that some teams will be consulted for their opinions. I suggest that:

a. AXP committee to immediately cease taking advice from people with a conflict of interests – That’s a big No-No. Since AXP has such an aggressive schedule, any advanced knowledge of the rules or stage requirements will skew the results so much that small entities will have no chance to compete. (this was one of the conspiracies behind one of the biggest intelligent car race last year – I am not going to say which one) Sometimes it’s important to even “appear” to be fair.

b. Have those people involved in the drafting the rules, design the stages/tracks and preparing the stages/tracks sign a non-disclosure
agreement.
Page 21: If I read it correctly, the AXP second-tier awards do not require vehicles to be “production-intent”?
Page 21: Why FMVSS and EPA standards? You are basically requiring the car to conform to the American standards. While I am not an expert in international safety regulations, but I am sure not everybody intended to sell their cars to the US.
Page 21: The requirement that “production-intent” vehicles must be in production “in a year” after the Final Race:
a. Define production (how many units per year, at what price) – will 2 vehicles be enough? To me, even 10,000 Units is not mass production (it’s more like Lotus). This has significant implication to the capital requirements.
b. Why 1 year? This is completely not friendly to small entities and it sounds arbitrary. It favors companies with existing production facilities, in other words, requires small entities to cooperate with these automakers, significantly reduce their bargining power - and increase the final production costs.
Page 21: A bond requirement is clearly not fair to smaller teams. A bond removes significant amount of working capital critical to a startup, which is counter productive. On the other hand, the same amount will have no effect on a larger company. I suggests that:
a. Instead of forfeiting a bond, AXP should hold the X Prize itself hostage,and yank it from the underperforming “winner”. I think the X Prize is something invaluable to anyone.
Page 21: I suggest removing any references to a “Grand Prize” since there is no one vehicle that’s best for everybody. Each design is optimized to a particular application/market, in terms of size, weight, power, price and performance. The “second-tier” awards should be all “Grand” prizes.
Page 12 and various other places: Remove “it is essential for teams that do not have a proven history… to prove that they [could] sell and service vehicles … ” – this is discriminating against small entities. You wouldn’t say something like: “it is essential for minority or women-owned business to prove that… blah blah blah…” It seems to me that you do NOT intend to review the business plans from major automakers even if the plans are as crappy as heck. I believe all business plans must be given thorough evaluations.
Page 11: Quantify the “features” or establish a scoring system immediately. We are running out of time – we need to know the best mix of features to be included [in our vehicles to maximize the chance of survival]
Page 28: I totally discourage continuing educating the public using English units “MPG” or “MPGe”. So much for innovations when none of you dare to change the status quo. [oh right - American auto industry is the culprit] Do you know why we lost the $125M Mars Climate Orbiter?
Page 16: By the way, 100MPGe sounds really arbitrary. I don’t mind that being a minimum requirement but your scoring system should reward additional fuel efficiency.
Page 16: Also MPGe when applied to electric fuel reflects the “current” mix of power generation [capacities]. Certainly, in the near future, as more and more wind, solar, hydro and nuclear facilities, MPGe and total emissions for electric fuel should improve. How do you adjust for that?
Page 14: Quantify the incentive for flex-fuel immediately. By the way, did you mean “multi-fuel” here?
Page 17: Is re-configuration (hardware and software) of the vehicle allowed between and during stages?
Page 20: Which simulation software will be provided? How many licenses per team? At the meeting Neal or somebody said “[Before the final race] We will run some crash simulation” - does “we” here mean AXP and SAE? Does that mean I don’t have to invest in CATIA equipment?
Page 8: Quantify the power consumptions of the heater, air conditioning, audio system. Are they required to be active during the races?
Page 16: Please provide an estimate of size, weight and power, as well as interface requirements, for the AXP-provided telemetry unit.
Page 7: Define interface requirements and quantify ground clearance, cooling and attachment points.
Page 7: Remove the phrase “include but may not be limited to” and substitute with a definitive list of features.
Page 7: Define envelope requirement for the interior of the Mainstream class vehicles. “four 95th percentile adult males” don’t tell me anything. Four adult stacked like pancakes (solar-car-like sitting arrangement – unacceptable to some religions) are different from four sitting comfortably in a Bentley. You need to define parameters such as minimum head room, leg room, etc. I don’t see the word “Sedan” in the requirements – does that mean it could be a two-door car? A 2+2 even? Give examples: Will a car as small as an Audi TT (four-seater coupe) qualify?
Page 11: “Quality of Workmanship” doesn’t mean much to preproduction vehicles. When the vehicles go into mass production, it will change anyway. I hope all this is useful to you. I am looking forward to see your next draft.

[That’s it. That’s all we want to whine about for now. Hope this is all useful to you.]

About SSM

Society for Sustainable Mobility (SSM website: http://www.osgv.org/) is a program of the International Humanities Center (http://www.IHCenter.org), a 501(c)[3] nonprofit charitable organization based in Los Angeles, California. SSM’s three-part mission is to create: 1. Sustainable technologies to improve the energy efficiency of transportation; 2. An open-design infrastructure to accelerate sustainable technologies into the marketplace and to harness help from great minds around the world; 3. The business strategy to commercialize our products and bring them to the hands of consumers.

About the X-Prize Foundation

The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational non-profit prize institute whose mission is to bring about radical breakthroughs in space and technology for the benefit of humanity. On October 4th, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured world headlines when Mojave Aerospace Ventures, led by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private craft to space twice in two weeks to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. Because of the dramatic nature of the achievement, the X PRIZE Foundation is now widely recognized as the leading model for fostering innovation through competition. In October 2006, the Foundation launched the $10M Archon X PRIZE for Genomics for the first team to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days.