MAX Update No. 26: Seeking Ideas for More Horsepower

Reader Contribution by Staff
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Photo by Pixabay/qimono

The rules for the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize have been under development for some years now, and all us entrants are on pins and needles — waiting for their release. We’ve had looks at rule proposals all along the way, given to us in confidence. That’s really been the only challenge I’ve faced as a combination entrant/journalist: there have been times I’ve had burn-after-reading documents and had to resist my urge to blab.

But now that the latest draft of the Auto X Prize Competition Guidelines have been made available to the public, I’m going to ask for your advice.

The final rules are pretty certain to require we meet a performance standard of zero to 60 mph in under 18 seconds. Not much under, 17.999 will do, but for MAX, that’s going to be tough.

What? 18 seconds to 60 mph isn’t very fast, but you’d be surprised how many vehicles on the road can’t do it. Fully loaded, my four-cylinder Dodge Caravan can’t do it, and while it’s hardly a performance car, it’s adequate. Anyway, this 18 second thing is a fairly recent requirement. It wasn’t in the projections when we signed up, so we had designed MAX from the get-go to hit 60 mph in 20 seconds.

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