Ronnie Polaneczky: Despite loss, road ahead bright for W. Philly High car team

WHEN I saw the subject line on the e-mail from Ann Cohen, my stomach sank.

"All good things," it read - as in, "All good things must come to an end."

I clicked the note open and read the crushing news: The West Philly Hybrid X Team had gotten knocked out of the Progressive Automotive X Prize.

Five days into what they'd hoped would be a 10-day road test and a rigorous evaluation of the technical systems of their cars, they learned that their vehicles - a smart, four-door model and a hot, two-door sports car - didn't meet the exacting standards of the $10 million contest.

The team's exhilarating, nearly three-year odyssey had ended.

"There's been lots of tears," said team manager/den mother Cohen, whom I spoke with by phone as she made her way home from the Michigan International Speedway, where the latest elimination rounds for the prize will end tomorrow.

"But we had such a great run. It's hard to feel anything but proud."

I'll say.

West Philly Hybrid X did more than build cars that average far more, per gallon, than anything being produced by the world's gazillion-dollar auto industry.

They also showed an international audience of competitors and educators what urban high-school students can do when their excited teachers engage them in activities beyond the traditional, often stifling environment of the classroom.

Seen from that perspective, West Philly Hybrid X has won the whole thing.

Readers of this column are familiar with West Philly Hybrid X - composed of students in an after-school club of West Philadelphia High School's Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering.

They're led by teacher Simon Hauger and a handful of dynamo teachers and mentors who got the preposterous idea to enter a contest they had no business thinking they might win:

The Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, which requires entrants to create an affordable, alternative-energy car that gets 100 miles per gallon and can be mass-produced. They must also submit a business plan detailing where and how the car will be made and marketed.

The contest will award $5 million for the best four-door economy car; $2.5 million each will go to two winners in a two-seater category.

Last fall, among the original 111 entrants were university teams (Cornell and MIT) and established automakers (Tesla Motors and Tata Motors), with access to massive resources and money. By last week, when the latest round of testing began, only 21 remained - including West Philly, the only high-school-based team.

"To be honest, the adults on the team originally didn't think we had a chance," says Hauger, who, over the last decade, has led his club to twice win the national Tour de Sol, a contest in which competitors develop alternative-fuel vehicles.

"We saw the contest as a way to stretch the students, to use what they learned in school in a real-life environment. But when we kept making it through the different elimination rounds, we thought, 'Maybe we actually do have a chance.' "

Last week, though, his team saw the limits of what they could accomplish without the resources and training of their professional competitors, whose experts could quickly fix glitches that arose during the testing.

"One team had a big, air-conditioned tent, where technicians sitting at computers were talking, via headsets, to the driver out on the track, telling him - to the tenth of a second - what his time was on the last lap."

"And there we were," he says, laughing helplessly, "with a sweaty kid out on the track, holding a stop watch and yelling 'Slow down! Slow down!'" - for the braking test. "How could we compete?"

Remarkably well, it turns out. According to X Prize senior director Eric Cahill, West Philly was eliminated because the mileage performance of their retrofitted Ford Focus came in "just a shade" under the required 67 mpg needed to advance.

"It was heartbreaking," says Cahill, noting how West Philly had captured the hearts of not just contest organizers but competitors, too. "The team was so impressive. The kids brought a level of passion and energy that inspired all of us. Everyone was pulling for them."

Cahill hopes that West Philly will mature and refine its technology, perhaps eventually licensing it to an automaker or start-up company able to mass produce affordable, environmentally kind cars to replace the gas guzzlers that are destroying the planet.

"At the very least, these are smart kids under good mentorship who learned an awful lot and got to experience something that very few other kids have," he says. We need kids like these, he adds, "if we're to accelerate the pace of research and innovation" in alternative energy.

By yesterday, Hauger was over his disappointment and was thinking of new ways to keep this awesome group of kids under his wing.

"You spend a few days a week with the students, you really get to know them," he says. "We want to build on those relationships."

He, Cohen and those who worked so closely with the students hope to open a charter school that uses an automotive curriculum to engage kids' intellect and creativity in ways that make thrilling sense.

"In this city, we talk all the time about school reform. Here, we've found a structure of education that actually works," he says. "These kids are excited and focused."

In the end, that's the only prize that matters.

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly. com/ronnieblog.