Auto X Prize wins $5.5 million from DOE for its own prize-giving contest
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 6:03PM by Sebastian Blanco
While the Automotive X Prize's raison d'être is to give out money to the best high-mileage vehicles and business plans in the $10 million contest, as the saying goes, it takes money to give out money. To that end, the AXP announced today that it has received $5.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. The funding is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and is intended to "to support the X PRIZE Foundation's work to inspire a new generation of energy efficient vehicles" through technical assistance and outreach efforts. President Obama has a plan called "Strategy for American Innovation" that asks federal agencies "to increase their use of prizes as a tool for promoting technological advances." This announcement seems like a perfect fit for that plan. To be clear, the AXP's $10 million prize purse is still being offered by Progressive Casualty Insurance.
In other AXP news, 12 team vehicles will be on display at SEMA this week. We'll try to track some of them down while we're in town.
[Source: EERE]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Throwback 7:07PM (11/02/2009)
"The funding is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and is intended to "to support the X PRIZE Foundation's work to inspire a new generation of energy efficient vehicles" through technical assistance and outreach efforts"
And here I thought the AR&R was to provide jobs.
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wincros 10:33PM (11/02/2009)
Money means expanded activity, bigger or more prizes. Maybe new employees to do that. More competition for the prize equals more effort and more employees or contracts to outside companies for help. It takes absolutely no imagination effort to see that, but you still do not like it. So your objection must have other motives than the stated one.
Sigh. people with concealed agendas are not real.
GoodCheer 7:26AM (11/03/2009)
Throwback, I know you are fairly far right-leaning, I would have thought that as a fiscal conservative you would like the idea of injecting money into innovation through a mechanism that does not involve 'picking the winners' (by the government). Of course they could give the money to consumers, like Cash for Clunkers, and let them pick the winners, but giving it to competitions like this seems reasonably even-handed, doesn't it?
And of course it will generate jobs: Every competitor to the event has to hire people to develop and build their entries. Facing a prize means that there's more motivation to develop the projects (and thus hire people).
Throwback 10:03AM (11/03/2009)
So competitiors would not participate if the government did not provide ADDITIONAL prize money? Is that what happened during the space x prize? It takes a long stretch to think companies participating in the X-prize are doing so only due to government money. How many jobs are created by the additional government money? The prize money is unchanged so what exactly is the tax payer money for?
According to the release it is "to support the X PRIZE Foundation's work to inspire a new generation of energy efficient vehicles" through technical assistance and outreach efforts. What does that mean and how many jobs will that provide for $5.5 million dollars?
GoodCheer 10:24AM (11/03/2009)
Throwback: All good questions. I don't know the answers, and it's not clear to me that the answers to those questions even exist in the public sphere. I would guess that the X PRIZE came up with some plan and some numbers on their DOE loan/grant application. Maybe you can find it online and find out (but I doubt it).
It seems likely to me that the X PRIZE will have more competitions in the future (as they have in the past), and this money is not necessarily earmarked for this competition.
wincros 10:34PM (11/02/2009)
Can no one rid us of this a--h---- sending spam from China?
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Mark Kiernan 6:54AM (11/03/2009)
Ban links in posts for a few weeks and he will disappear.
mike 8:09AM (11/03/2009)
I am all for these types of programs.
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