What it needs is some cool corvette style flush headlamps (LED of course to save generator power). It\'s a very cool vehicle, but a bit of a \"cyclops\" in appearance from the front.
I run the same \"Moon Eyes\"wheel covers on my car. Probably good for a 1 MPG increase at Hiway speeds. mooneyesusa dot com

I had often thought of taking a 1982 Mazda RX7 I owned, lightening it up where possible, and installing a turbo-diesel in it for economy. The Avion shape from the nose clear to back edge of the doors looks exactly the shape of the RX7! If they didn\'t use that shape, at the very least they were on the same good design track as the Mazda engineers! I called the wife in, covered the back of the Avion and asked her what kind of car that was. She did not hesitate and said the RX7 we used to own!

Uh,
Didn\'t the Opel Eco Speedster achieve higher MPG?
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/the-opel-eco-speedster.php
The Eco Speedster, with its surprisingly diminutive 1.3-liter ECOTECH CDTI, tops out at 155 mph and clocked an average fuel economy of 113 mpg over a 24-hour road test.
113mpg.
Well, it is faster :-)

It\'s great cars like this that would be ripe for \"kit car\" construction, if a company was only willing to sell the kit pieces (frame, bodywork, motor), and the rest one could purchase off-the-shelf or recycle yards for steering, dash, gauges, lights, axles, etc.

This technology offers the possibility of improving emissions problems and fuel shortage issues. Why has it not been developed into a commercially viable product? It\'s been around for 25 years. If it were produced on large scale, it would have improved greatly during that time. Yet the auto industry fools around with hybrids, all electrics, and very expensive electronic fuel control gizmos. What am I missing here? Is there a catch to this that is not apparent?

I wonder why the Avion supermileage car was not awarded one of the X-prizes

Good question, ndrwknght. See today\'s issue of Gizmag and my comments on the funky looking underpowered car that won the prize. There\'s something wrong with this picture. Avion has been around since the mid 1980s and has been getting 100 mpg all that time. It should have won the X prize many times over. Why has it languished in the shadows all this time?

@ ndrwknght and biscuitcutter:
According to the company newsletter, the Avion team chose to withdraw from the Automotive X-PRIZE. See http://www.100mpgplus.com/newsletter/nn4.pdf

Volk\'s wagon (see Opel above) and the comments by Underwear Knight and biscuitcutter are spot on. I\'d also like to see vegie oil, which is discarded by sushi restaurants, cleaned up and re-used in these cars for a fraction of the price of refined diesel. Maybe the transparency of Gizmag will help bring this about.

Ben C. Thanks for the link. I think their economic reasons are rather lame, but their comments about the X Prize rules make it obvious that they felt they couldn\'t win. It looks like this car only gets its really high mileage on the highway. Apparently, the X Prize rules place a premium on city driving.

In spite of that, I still think this car should be developed commercially. If that were to happen, I strongly suspect that its city/highway mileage ratio would improve. It might even turn into some sort of hybrid that would get the best mileage in both worlds.