Lynchburg Business

At the Speed of “Very Light”: The Car of the Future is Right Here in Lynchburg

Issue: April 2010 by Mitchell Malcheff in Architecture, Engineering & Construction, Inside The Magazine

1415 Kemper Street in Lynchburg is a dilapidated, tired warehouse that, at first glance, looks abandoned. No signs mask its weathered walls to indicate that any occupant has moved into the 360,000 square feet that used to house a textile factory. Hidden on the ground floor, though, is Edison 2, a company that is attempting to transform the automotive landscape and the way the world looks at the car.

Edison 2 is the brainchild of Oliver Kuttner, who is known more for his real estate ventures in Charlottesville and Lynchburg than automotive design—a contention that Kuttner says is backwards.

“I was always involved in cars, it’s just that newspapers like to write about real estate…all of my life I have said I’m a developer second,” Kuttner said.

Kuttner’s real passion is racing and he has been involved in a number of projects in the past, most recently bringing the Ford GTR back to the American Le Mans Series. Today, he is working towards undoubtedly the biggest purse of his racing career—the $10 million X Prize.

“It’s the efficiency Olympics for automobiles and it happens once in your life,” Kuttner said.

Held at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan, the X Prize pits teams from across the globe against each other in a long-distance stage race. The only catch? Each entry must average 100 MPGe, (equivalent to 100 mpg of gasoline regardless of what fuel is used). The X Prize, which has previously been awarded for spacecrafts, offers the $10 million in hopes that teams will create vehicles that break the mold.

Kuttner and his team, all of whom come from a racing background, have produced what they believe is a winning entry in their Very Light Car, a 250 cc, one cylinder, 27 horsepower internal combustion engine that runs on ethanol and should top out at well over 110 mph.

Expected to weigh less than 1,000 pounds, the Very Light Car is the result of leaving nothing to chance, according to Edison 2’s Director of Communications, David Brown.

“They looked at the entirety of this car, took virtually nothing off the shelf, took every piece, thought about its function, thought about its weight and you end up with a car that is the lightest, most aerodynamic car perhaps ever built,” Brown, the former mayor of Charlottesville and current city council member, said.

Of the 41 entries in the Progressive Automotive X Prize, 35 are hybrid or electric vehicles, making the Edison 2 team one of just six using an internal combustion engine. This kind of engine, combined with steel and aluminum construction, were all part of an effort to design a vehicle capable of being mass-produced. A business model is part of the X Prize and teams must demonstrate how they can sell 10,000 cars over the next three years, as well as meet 2014 emission and safety standards, to qualify for entry.

“Most of the teams are working on a car that will cost $50,000…this car will cost $20,000,” Brown said.

Edison 2 is also hedging their bet by entering a car in all three categories: Mainstream (4 passenger), Alternative tandem (2 passenger) and Alternative side-by-side (2 passenger). The $10 million award will be split between the three categories, with the Mainstream winner receiving half and the two Alternative categories splitting the remaining $5 million.

Kuttner has assembled a team that has plenty of hours under the hood. Headed by Chief of Design Ron Mathis, the group includes Barnaby Wainfan, a Northrop Grumman aerodynamics fellow, and Brad Jaeger, a Vanderbilt engineering graduate and professional driver who will drive the Edison 2 cars in September’s competition. Along with Julian Calvet and Kevin Doran, the team has a number of professional racing victories under their belt as well as years of experience in designing prototypes and racing vehicles, which has helped to create a radically new design.

“We redesigned everything. Everything’s new; it’s a new approach,” Jaeger said. “While we’re in the mold as far as dealing with cars, we are so far outside of the mold from the Big Three (General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) in building a production vehicle.”

For example, the suspension, including shock absorbers and springs, are located inside of each wheel; a design that the team feels is one of their biggest breakthroughs. Even simple bolts and nuts have been scrutinized.

“To build a better car, you make it a little better every time,” Kuttner explained. “All the time—lighter is better, lighter is better.”

Edison 2’s emphasis on decreasing drag and weight are different from other teams, who are focusing instead on using batteries or hybrid engines to produce the required 100-MPGe. And, though they are attempting to solve complex problems, Kuttner’s mantra throughout has been simple: Keep the weight down, make it work well and make it cheap.

If successful, Kuttner claims the principles that underlie the Very Light Car, when produced on a mass scale, would allow the U.S. to export oil. Despite that contention, only three other projects like Edison 2’s are being conducted in the entire world—Volkswagon’s L1, Toyota’s 1/x and Gordon Murray’s T.25. Kuttner says Edison 2 is ahead of them all.

With preliminary stages fast approaching, the team is in crunch-time mode, according to Kuttner, working toward a goal that would be the realization of a dream that’s been a lifetime in the making for Edison 2.

“There are people in my family that think I’m crazy to be doing this as a real estate developer during a time when every real estate developer is hanging on a cliff…but sometimes if you have an opportunity, you grab it, and I am 100 percent [certain] that, for me, this is my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. And I personally believe that for all of these guys, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Kuttner said. “By taking a clean sheet and starting from nothing we’re making a leap and it’s a leap people don’t realize even exists.”