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Ronnie Polaneczky: Though not 1st place, West Philly Hybrid X clearly won

OK, SO the kids on the West Philly Hybrid X team didn't win the $10 million automotive competition they'd set their hearts on winning.

OK, SO the kids on the West

Philly Hybrid X team didn't win the $10 million automotive competition they'd set their hearts on winning.

"How are they doing?" a worried caller recently asked me. She'd read my column describing how the team had been eliminated, and she'd been worrying about them ever since, imagining them curled in the fetal position on a garage floor somewhere.

"I don't want them to give up on their future," she fretted.

Having spent a day with the team in Washington, D.C., last Thursday, I'd say they're doing fabulously.

May I count the ways?

The winner of the contest they lost wants their help with a new project.

They're among those leading the pack in a brand-new international contest that they have a decent shot at winning.

And President Obama himself praised them as a stellar example of success, during a White House announcement last week about his new plan to strengthen science, technology, engineering and math education.

So, no, the members of West Philly Hybrid X were not in the fetal position when I accompanied them on an early-morning ride to the nation's capital. They were, however, sprawled across the seats of our chartered bus, snoozing.

C'mon - they're teenagers.

As you may recall, West Philly Hybrid X is composed of students in an after-school club of West Philadelphia High School's Academy of Automotive and Mechanical Engineering. Led by dynamic teachers and mentors, they got the ridiculous notion, three years ago, to enter an impossible contest:

The Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, an international competition to create an affordable, alternative-energy car that gets 100 miles per gallon and can be mass-produced.

The only high-school team to enter the contest, the students' participation was first regarded as a stunt. But as well-heeled competitors - including Ivy League universities, established automakers and independent entrepreneurs - failed to make successive cuts, West Philly Hybrid X, astoundingly, hung in there.

What started as 111 entrants (competing for $10 million in prize money) dwindled to 21 before West Philly Hybrid X was eliminated. But the team's doggedness and creativity had so moved contest organizers that the students were asked to attend last week's awards ceremony in D.C. - and to bring their cars so attendees could see what the Little Team That (Almost) Could had been able to accomplish.

Afterward, a handful of the students were invited to the White House, where Obama praised their after-school program as one that "challenged them to solve problems and to work together, to learn and build and create."

They'll be doing just that come winter, when the grand winner of the Progressive Automotive X Prize, Oliver Kuttner, will let the team build an alternative, electric motor for the car whose internal-combustion engine helped him snag the big prize.

So, even though West Philly Hybrid X didn't roll away a winner, it represented the competition
 
proudly.

As X Prize Foundation CEO Peter Diamandis noted at the ceremony, his group's mission is "to inspire, educate and drive radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity, to help solve the world's grand challenges."

I bet he never dreamed that the competition would, in itself, engage high-school students to do something relevant with their classroom learning.

As any city educator will tell you, engaging their students is the grandest challenge of all.

Since it left the competition, West Philly Hybrid X has entered another one, called the GE Ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid, a $200 million, international contest to come up with ideas to "reimagine" the world's energy grid.

So far, more than 2,100 entrants from 87 countries have entered the contest, part of which allows the public to vote, via the GE website, for ideas they think have the greatest potential to affect the environment.

West Philly Hybrid X has two cool entries - a proposal for a green-technology high school (hybrid school buses and green roof, anyone?), and one that allows electric cars to return unused energy to the power grid.

And guess what? As of yesterday, of all 2,100-plus entries, West Philly ranked 28th in most votes cast (for info, go to http://www.evxteam.org/press/blogs/item/275-vote-for-us).

Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. Sept. 30.

You can probably guess whom I'm voting for.

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.