Is McCain's battery prize really that dumb?

And the X-Prize was worth only $10 million

When I first heard of John McCain's battery prize and tax credit for EVs, I wasn't impressed. I wanted tax credits for today's hybrid vehicles. Others, such as Cars.com have called it hype, and the DetroitNews even called it dumb. Barrack Obama called it a gimmick.

Ironically, Obama has ethanol contests planned, and I'm pretty confident there isn't a bigger "gimmick" than corn-based ethanol.

Still, the X-Prize inspired many to risk lives to achieve back-to-back suborbital space flights that many claimed impossible - all for just $10 million. For a small start-up, the potential of a $300 million dollar prize could be quite alluring. And, let's be honest, the US auto industry has been stuck in the box for decades, such a battery prize could help a small company compete against this in-the-box mentality.

Granted, a battery prize is not comprehensive energy policy - not by a moonshot - but isn't a little competition better than just the handouts that have gotten us nowhere in the past?

Exciting? Tata enters the X-Prize

What's 100 mpg worth to you?

Tata Motors has thrown its hat into the X-Prize ring to develop a 100 mpg car, according to recent reports. With countries such as India and China becoming hugely critical to the future of automobile sales, such a development appears interesting. Not only is Tata developing super cheap cars, such as the Nano, Tata is also developing hybrid cars, fuel cell vehicles and alternative fuels, but on this hemisphere, few seem to care. Now that Tata is taking on the X-Prize - the first major automaker to do so - a strong X-Prize showing could drive huge buzz to this up-and-coming automaker.

Can the X-Prize achieve what automakers cannot?

SpaceShipOne after the first X-Prize

After SpaceShipOne won the first X-Prize, several years ago now, I sat in the Mojave Desert feeling as if the world was on the verge of a great change. I'm still waiting. Nonetheless, the X-Prize did lead to Virgin Galactic and a number of other private space ventures, so the fruits of the first X-Prize are still ripening.

Today, at the New York Auto Show, the X-Prize is hoping to inspire a new wave of green cars. Yet, I cannot help but wonder, is an automotive X-Prize really needed? Every major automaker is now working on 'green cars', and the main obstacles now boil down to costs. On the other hand, however, the lack of out-of-the-box thinking seems to be a major auto-industry illness.

While the 'green' X-Prize might not lead to a new, green production vehicle, the X-Prize can still inspire the public, perhaps even reshape consumer psychology regarding fuel economy and pollution. That alone is worth the effort.

Could the X-prize prove Detroit has duped America?

The car that started it all?

When Toyota launched the Prius hybrid car, executives from the Big 3 almost couldn't stop laughing at such a ridiculous effort. Americans, they seemed to believe, could care less about hybrid cars and fuel efficiency.

Well, who is laughing now?

Sure, hybrids are a long way from ending the internal combustion engine, but the vehicles did wake up some Americans, especially those realizing the ever-growing dangers of foreign oil dependency and/or global warming.

Can the Automotive X-Prize challenge the auto establishment even more? Dan Carney comments for Edmunds "The winning cars will not use "fuel molecule aligners," "air vortex generators," "fish carburetors" or any of the other mythical and fraudulent add-on devices claimed to produce fantastic fuel economy. Of course, this [an X-Prize Winner] will prove to conspiracy theorists that there's still a nefarious conspiracy between Detroit and Big Oil."