{"id":21183,"date":"2024-03-16T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/lynchburg-va\/?p=21183"},"modified":"2024-03-12T18:04:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T18:04:38","slug":"edison2-and-the-very-light-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/lynchburg-va\/edison2-and-the-very-light-car\/","title":{"rendered":"Edison2 and the Very Light Car"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>R<\/strong>ECORD-BREAKING INVENTIONS are not common, and Lynchburg is proud to be home to one such invention: the Edison2 Very Light Car. Nearly 15 years ago, Lynchburg found itself on the national stage during the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a competition where the mission was to inspire a new generation of super-efficient vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lynchburg\u2019s automotive design company, Edison2, joined the competition, beating out 111 other teams in the mainstream category and constructing a 4-passenger car that boasted over 100 MPGe of fuel economy. Founder and CEO Oliver Kuttner said his interest was caught by both the prize money \u2013 $5 million \u2013 as well as the chance to invent something that benefits the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cRather than all these people who talk about it and have their opinions, I sat down with my engineers,\u201d Kuttner said. \u201cI very much believe that the only real solution is really smart thinking about how we use our resources and efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Very Light Car was built on that same principle of efficiency and the foundation of basic engineering principles. Chief of Aerodynamics Barnaby Wainfan said the reason the team succeeded was their refusal to start with an existing car design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAlmost everyone else was looking in the wrong direction,\u201d Wainfan said. \u201cThey were looking for the magic drivetrain to drive an otherwise conventional car \u2014 hybrid, electric, diesel, flux capacitor, whatever it was \u2014 and we realized that that wasn\u2019t going to work. And the primary reason that wasn\u2019t going to work \u2014 when you just step back and look at it \u2014 was just the total energy it actually took to make a conventional car move down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The resulting vehicle was built to be light and aerodynamic, and with the experience of Chief of Design Ron Mathis, it had all the handling of a race car along with the ability to withstand a crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou had a race car engineer with free rein to design a chassis,\u201d Wainfan said. \u201cIt was a fun, fun car to drive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results were obvious. The two finalists in the mainstream competition were both Edison2 cars, as every other team had either dropped out, broken down, or failed to achieve the MPGe requirements. The Very Light Car even beat out the electric cars in the competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cElectricity is in our future, and being able to put electricity into cars &#8230; is a very good thing,\u201d Kuttner said. \u201cSo, I\u2019m in favor of electric cars, but the missing ingredient is to make cars more efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wainfan said the Edison2 team achieved something many believed impossible. At the time, 100 MPGe was about twice as fuel efficient as the best car on the market. While the Edison2 car didn\u2019t make it to full production, he said, they proved such a car was possible in a straightforward, practical engineering way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t get many chances in life to write your name in the record books,\u201d Wainfan said. \u201cThe first time somebody does something technological that is otherwise believed to be impossible, you fundamentally change the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, Kuttner has not given up on the Very Light Car. The prototype that won the competition nearly 15 years ago is still being improved, Kuttner said, and the thousands of hours he and his team have spent on it have made their mark. Even if it is not an Edison2 car, he said, the X Prize team has made an impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re going to see cars that look like the Edison2 cars,\u201d Kuttner said. \u201cThey\u2019re not going to do it because Oliver did it, they\u2019re just going to do it because that\u2019s the only way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To Kuttner, improving the world for future generations is incredibly important. Increasing the efficiency of current technology is one of the easiest ways to do that, and it is his goal to make it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou cannot build your future around things that might happen. You have to work with what exists,\u201d Kuttner said. \u201cI just keep trying to make the world a little bit of a better place.\u201d <strong>GN<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RECORD-BREAKING INVENTIONS are not common, and Lynchburg is proud to be home to one such invention: the Edison2 Very Light Car. Nearly 15 years ago, Lynchburg found itself on the national stage during the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a competition where the mission was to inspire a new generation of super-efficient vehicles. Lynchburg\u2019s automotive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":21185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Edison2 and the Very Light Car - Lynchburg, VA Good News Exchange<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/lynchburg-va\/edison2-and-the-very-light-car\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Edison2 and the Very Light Car - Lynchburg, VA Good News Exchange\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"RECORD-BREAKING INVENTIONS are not common, and Lynchburg is proud to be home to one such invention: the Edison2 Very Light Car. 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