via wired autopia blog…An excellent run down of the officially competing Automotive X Prize Teams.

The race to build the world’s first mass-production car capable of triple-digit fuel economy is rolling right along, with 25 teams betting they can win the $10 million prize for building a super-efficient, super-clean car people would actually buy.  

The Progressive Automotive X-Prize has drawn competitors from around the world, and the teams include college kids and India’s largest automaker. The cars they’re building use every drivetrain technology short of hydrogen fuel cells, and most of them look like something you’d want to drive.

With three weeks left until the registration deadline, X-Prize officials expect to announce a few last-minute entries. Until then, here’s a run-down of who’s who and what’s what.

First, a quick primer on the rules, which span 70 pages. The cars have to be production-capable, meaning they meet all federal safety guidelines, it must be possible to build 10,000 of them annually within reasonable costs, they have to be desirable (granted, that’s a highly subjective criteria) and the teams must have a viable business plan for producing and selling 10,000 vehicles annually by 2014.

The vehicles must deliver at least 100 MPGe. That’s shorthand for miles per gallon equivalent, which measures fuel efficiency in terms of the energy equivalent of one U.S. gallon of gasoline. It’s basically a means of comparing apples to apples when you’ve got electric cars, diesel-electric hybrids and other technologies competing together. Electric vehicles must have a range of 200 miles for the “mainstream” class – defined as a car resembling your typical five-passenger-compact – and 100 for the anything-goes “experimental” class.

As for emissions, total well-to-wheels CO2 production can’t exceed 200 grams per kilometer. For the sake of comparison, the Toyota Prius produces 114 g/km at the tailpipe.

The prize will be awarded sometime next year following a series of competitions based on real-world driving conditions. Interest form would-be Henry Fords, Preston Tuckers and Malcolm Bricklins has been running high. Since you can’t tell the players without a program, we’ll provide one running down the 20 teams the X Prize folks have identified so far. We’ve included those photos were we can…

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Click here to read the entire article at wired autopia.

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UPDATE: 2/05/09: I just realized that there seems to be no mention in this article of one of the teams I’m most interested in. Persu Mobility, which was originally founded as Venture One Vehicles is also supposed to be competing in the X Prize. I’ll have to look into it further to make sure I have my facts right and up to date…

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4261425.html?page=5

http://xprizecars.com/2008/06/venture-vehicles-ventureone.php

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UPDATE: 2/13/09: Persu Mobility is still currently listed as a letter of intent contender for the Auto X Prize. No info on their site about their X Prize status….