CARazed

Velozzi is one of the fifty Automotive X PRIZE contendors. They are entering two cars, one to the mainstream category and another to the alternative division. Both cars will drive their wheels with an AC electric motor powered by on-board lithium-ion batteries. When the battery charge runs low a multi-fuel charging system (motor and generator) that burns your choice of ethanol, methanol, bio-diesel, gasoline or diesel. At night you’ll be able to plug your Velozzi super car into the wall and recharge the batteries.

They expect fuel economy to be between 100 and 200 miles per gallon. Actual performance figures are still to be final but they are looking to achieve 0 to 60 acceleration in under 3 seconds and top speeds near 200 MPH. To achieve these lofty goals composite body panels and carbon fiber honeycomb chassis technology, much like a Formula 1 car, is being used.

Although this looks like an interesting experiment in pushing plug-in hybrid technology to the limit, it doen’t look like a potential X PRIZE winner to us because the car they descibe on their website is so extreme. But we love the idea of coupling the plug-in hybrid technology with a multi-fuel engine. The idea of having extreme flexibility at the pump is compelling. In fact that should be the real story here, not the super car performance.

We hope the Velozzi team is at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) this week to sizing up the competition. Their natural conclusion should be to build an affordable car that leverages their multi-fuel engine and plug-in hybrid drive. If they could deliver that package they’d steal the X PRIZE away from people like Aptera and Fisker.