By John DeFore

The New York State Fair began yesterday in Syracuse, and while many of us associate such events mainly with deep-fried food and concerts by (ahem) bands whose stars have faded, this fair may also debut a future star: An early version of an electric car whose makers think it could win a $10 million prize  — and get 100 mpg.

The Progressive-sponsored Automotive X PRIZE (part of the larger X PRIZE umbrella of big-goal contests with lavish cash prizes) has offered that amount to anybody who can build a real-life car (plans for mass production are required), affordable for the masses, that gets at least 100 miles per gallon or its energy equivalent. A team of engineers from Cornell will visit the land of corn dogs to convince fairgoers that goal is reachable in the very near future.

An article in the Cornell Chronicle details the work of a team made up of over 70 students from various backgrounds. While the crew has all the polish of a serious start-up — in addition to their slick web site, they have sub-teams of business students working on financial plans while engineers tweak energy usage — what’s on view in Syracuse won’t look anything like a showroom model.

“Our goal is to bring awareness of the technology to the public,” as team leader Trey Riddle told the paper, so it shouldn’t matter that they’ll be driving a 1993 Geo Metro with most of its creature comforts ripped out to make way for a whole lot of batteries. Awareness that hugely efficient cars are a realistic goal may motivate Cornell’s team as much as the cash (”Be Inspired” is the tag line atop their web site). But that doesn’t mean they don’t intend to deliver: By early next year, they expect to be building a model that can fully recharge in six hours using an ordinary electrical outlet, will run 40-50 miles on that charge, and will seat four people with at least 10 cubic feet of cargo space left over.

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