Daily Archives: April 3, 2007

A 100 miles a Gallon Car – The Auto X Prize

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The NYTimes on the Auto X Prize:

The same group that awarded $10 million to a team that built the first private spacecraft to leave the earth’s atmosphere is expected to announce today the rules for its automotive competition.

The group, the X Prize Foundation, says that the automotive contest, expected to carry a prize of more than $10 million, could have a significant effect on the automobile industry by speeding up efforts to use alternative fuels and reduce consumption. The average fuel economy of vehicles sold in the United States has remained nearly stagnant — around 20 miles a gallon — for decades.

“Building a one-off that can go 100 miles per gallon, I think any of the automakers could do that,” said James A. Croce, chief executive of NextEnergy, a nonprofit organization in Detroit that promotes alternative energy. “It’s mass-producing them that’s the problem.”

EPA and CO2 regulation

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In December, we reported on a court case in the US where it was questioned whether the US EPA has the “the authority to regulate CO2 and other greenhouse gases? Are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons – air pollutants?”

The BBC reports that the supreme court of the US has ruled that the US EPA should regulate car pollution and that CO2 is a air pollutant.

The ruling says that unless the EPA can show that carbon dioxide is not involved in the warming seen around the world, the EPA should regulate it – and if it tries to make the case that CO2 is not involved, it would have a hard time winning it, our correspondent says.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, giving the majority ruling, wrote that the EPA’s position was “arbitrary, capricious or otherwise not in accordance with the law”.

“Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of ‘air pollutant’, we hold that the EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such gases from new motor vehicles,” the court ruled.