RaceAbout - Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE

[SuperPenetration]

Im here just to see if that one in Live for Speed is real

[DBSpy1]

Affordable,buyable,nope, fail.

[subzero92MK]

the back looks like a ferrari's one

[camwizardoz]

The back looks like a Ferrari and the front looks like just damn great. Where the hell is this car? i want it!

[dahms1126]

Best looking car out of all the others!

[dahms1126]

Best looking car out of all the others!

[StealthLikeTiger]

Can't seem to see the 'Buy it Now' button.

[rollinrudi]

Saw this couple of weeks ago. Pretty impressive thing. They lost the race by about couple of tenths of a second. Pity, it would be awesome what they could do with the prize money

BTW, my former colleagues designed the motors. :P

[DanFrederiksen]

with everything custom built it's not really that impressive that they only matched the stock steel Tata Indica car in energy consumption...

and the Wave II bested them by 50%

[sp33dou]

Can any one tell me why this car came 2nd?

It definetly deserves 1st place by all specs!

[DanFrederiksen]

@sp33dou no it doesn't. Wave II was 50% more energy efficient. Raceabout was only marginally more efficient than the Tata Indica car which is a completely normal stock car converted to electric drive. it deserves nothing at all. it's pathetic even, to do so much custom work and do no better than a standard unaerodynamic soft steel car that has twice as many seats..

[bubberband]

Out of all the cars in the competition, I would want to ride this one.

[a2930pup]

This is the greatest car I have ever seen and it charges so fast unlike tesla which takes 2 hours to charge plus it four wheal drive tesla does not have that

I hope one day I can own a Racearound

[bysantinkeisari]

This is absolutely phenomenal. Great job!

[pv1000ful]

Cool. Where can I buy one?

[t83rg]

Fast, efficient, desirable.

Many cars can do two of these today, but only Tesla Roadster can do all three. Tesla however is not designed "from scracth" to be electric car and it lacks four wheel drive and also batteries like this.

So I think E-RA should be the winner, and hope that one day I could have a little test drive too. ;-)

[axelerat3d]

Congratulations for everyone involved. Regardless of the Xprize results the team should be very proud.

[randomdude10010]

Out of all these cars, this is the one I'd consider buying the most

[jabo109k]

I work in research. But I cannot see the kind of progress that is even comparable to what the xprice creates. This is the future.

[DanFrederiksen]

@jabo109k the X prize is frankly quite unimpressive. has a distinct amateur high school competition feel. it would be quite easy to beat them all with just the obvious design principles, light weight, aerodynamic and electric drive.

do you work in auto research? and if so for whom?

the big car makers have absolutely no innovation so relatively to them of course the x prize will look innovative.

[jabo109k]

@DanFrederiksen not automotive, I'm in air&space research. And as much as I like the engineering principles that one has to apply to design a vehicle like this, in the end it is not about that. People take the tec stuff for granted, but will not buy a car that looks like a 'frog'. So I think the technical problems these teams are facing are not the hardest ones. Getting the technology ready for the mass market is a whole different story and propably the bigger challange.

[DanFrederiksen]

@jabo109k who do you work for? air and space use far more exotic materials. commercial aircraft are typically glare (alu fiber glass composite) or straight carbon composite. turbine blades are monocrystalline castings and of course aerodynamics is king.

if cars were made with aerospace tech it would be pretty good and far ahead of anything in the auto xprize

[jabo109k]

@DanFrederiksen sorry, but I wouldn't spread that information on myself on the net. Let's just say there is no bigger company in the EU. And I beg to differ: commercial aircraft in service today are commonly plain aluminium. The a380 is partially(!) glare. & CFRP (my staff of life): Well we know they all want to ;) Only smaller companies such as 'Scaled' manage to walk the talk.

Car development is driven by other factors then the purely physical ones. If u ignore that, u wont make any money.

[DanFrederiksen]

@jabo109k so you work for EADS. don't be so secretive. there is no need. oceans of people work for EADS, it's hardly the same as posting your bank code online.

the boeing 787 use new materials btw.

have you worked on the A380?

[jabo109k]

@DanFrederiksen may I politely return the question and ask what your profession is? I do share your view that the car industry in fact is not nearly as innovative as it could be. But I am not putting my hopes on new materials and large technical breakthroughs. Instead engineers have to sit down and find and implement better solutions that r already there. Today they just install a plug for the iphone and call it a new model. To much psychology for my taste.

[DanFrederiksen]

@jabo109k I have degree in computer science but I do architectural computer graphics for a living. mainly just to pay the bills to have time for more important things. we don't need technological breakthroughs but of course improving cars is technical. it's just aerodynamics, weight optimization and battery electric drive. it's very easy and straight forward, the car makers are basically just willfully stupid. there is not a single car in the world that is designed by aerodynamics. always looks