Making cars seXy efficient

A car is a car is a car. Clearly, that statement ain't true.Sometimes a car is a sportster, and sometimes an SUV. Sometimes a van, sometimes a sedan.But what counts is under the hood, you might hear.Even that isn't necessarily a true statement these days.Sometimes you'll find the power source for a car under the hood, but it might just as easily be in the trunk, or in the case of big battery packs, under the seats.

The world is in the heady process of redefining the family passenger vehicle.In the liquid fuel category, there are gasoline cars, diesel cars and biodiesel cars, propane and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cars, cars that run on various combinations of gasoline and ethanol, hydrogen cars and so forth.There's the compressed air car.There are electric cars, and hybrids. But there are such variations, that you really need to pay attention.

There, for example, are plug-in hybrids, and extended range electrics, both of which have blends of traditional fuel engines and electric car capabilities. Like hybrids, but not like most hybrids.
Each new blend of transportation technologies seems to be getting its own name.Click on the “efficient transportation” category in the right hand column of this blog for a number of stories on these issues.

The key to modern vehicle technology, in an age of astronomic liquid fuel prices, is efficiency. And one of the things expected to help move efficiency along is the Automotive X Prize, a $10 million contest to develop the most energy efficient automobile possible—and they need to be fast.“The technology-neutral competition, a project of the X PRIZE Foundation, is open to teams from around the world that can design and build production-capable