Why the future of automaking belongs to the upstart

Updates on the Progressive Auto X-Prize and some wider implications (Wired via Instapundit):

You might argue that Edison2 and Illuminati Motor Works are small outfits with no hope of ever putting their cars into production. But to me, their smallness is exactly the point. They didn’t have armies of engineers and designers and coders and marketers. They didn’t know any billionaires. They were working in the depths of a severe economic recession, maxing out credit cards. Yet they solved a hard and important problem. These mere mortals had three years to reach 100 miles per gallon and 200 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. That was their race. And they won it. They prove that we can do better.