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Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
Audiobook12 hours

Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America

Written by Jason Fagone

Narrated by Adam Verner

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars entirely from scratch, rejecting decades of thinking about what a car should look like.

Jason Fagone follows four of those teams from the build stage to the final race and beyond-into a world in which destiny hangs on a low drag coefficient and a lug nut can be a beautiful talisman. The result is a gripping story of crazy collaboration, absurd risks, colossal hopes, and poignant losses. In an old pole barn in central Illinois, childhood sweethearts hack together an electric-powered dreamboat, using scavenged parts, forging their own steel, and burning through their life savings. In Virginia, an impassioned entrepreneur and his hand-picked squad of speed freaks pool their imaginations and build a car so light that you can push it across the floor with your thumb. In West Philly, a group of disaffected high school students come into their own as they create a hybrid car with the engine of a Harley motorcycle. And in Southern California, the early favorite-a start-up backed by millions in venture capital-designs a car that looks like an alien egg.

Ingenious is a joyride. Fagone takes us into the garages and the minds of the inventors, capturing the fractious yet beautiful process of engineering a bespoke machine. Suspenseful and bighearted, this is the story of ordinary people risking failure, economic ruin, and ridicule to create something vital that Detroit had never pulled off. As the Illinois team wrote in chalk on the wall of their barn, "SOMEBODY HAS TO DO SOMETHING. THAT SOMEBODY IS US."
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 5, 2013
ISBN9781452686936
Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
Author

Jason Fagone

Jason Fagone is a journalist who covers science, technology, and culture. Named one of the “Ten Young Writers on the Rise” by the Columbia Journalism Review, he works at the San Francisco Chronicle and has written for GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, the New York Times, Mother Jones, and Philadelphia magazine. Fagone is also the author of Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, the X Prize, and the Race to Revive America and Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream. He lives in San Francisco, California.

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Reviews for Ingenious

Rating: 3.926829292682927 out of 5 stars
4/5

41 ratings17 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I guess it says something about why we have such highly polluting, fuel inefficient motor vehicles that many copies of this well-written and interesting book sit unread on my library's shelves. Nominally, this is a book about a multimillion dollar contest to develop an extraordinary car in both fuel efficiency and pollution control while still meeting much of the driving capabilities we expect from "normal" cars. The author follows multiple contestant teams through the long process of developing and testing their entries. The author gets us to know the heart of the people involved as well as the technical, financial, and political hurdles they must overcome. In the end, the reader has a deep connection with them all. More to the point, the reader has a much better understanding of what it takes for anyone to build a product, find a niche, and all the other aspects of taking parts of the real world and turning them into something of benefit. As the author says about one of the contestants, "I only know he can't be killed. Bomb everything to rubble and watch him gather scrap. The Internet goes dark and he lights a match. And not him alone, but all ingenious kin: every kid in a shop, every girl and guy in a garage, every hacker and maker with no hope of bailout by bank or by nation."
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The book was somewhat interesting in that it was story about an important contest. The background on the teams and their struggles during the content was also interesting. At many points there was too much detail about the events and people's lives. I learned some about cars and about the X Prize.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I had difficulty finishing the book. There was minimal excitement generated in the story although the topic looked promising.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel 100 miles on the energy equivalent of one gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world. Jason Fagone follows four of those teams in Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America.The X Prize Foundation is most famously known for its first challenge to launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth's surface, twice within two weeks. The XPrize is modeled on the prize that got Lindbergh to fly across the Atlantic. (He was not just an adventurer; He was flying for the Orteig Prize of $25,000.) The X Prize founder uses the "bald appeal of human greed to achieve an idealistic goal." Like the Orteig Prize, the Space X prize had very simple rules.The Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize was a bit more muddled. Originally it was supposed to be a cross country race. Then it became a series of tests at the Michigan International Speedway. It had three categories: Mainstream, Alternative Tandem, and Alternative side-by-side.Fagone looks at these four teams as the prepare for and compete for the prize.Oliver Kuttner's Edison2 cars get the most ink. His theme was a relentless focus on reducing weight and improving aerodynamics. He had a car for each of the three categories.Team Illuminati was literally built in the cornfields of Illinois. The team was lead by a part-time tinkerer using electric motors.The West Philly Hybrid X Team was mostly students from the after school program at a West Philadelphia High School. Their goal was to make existing mainstream cars more efficient. They rebuilt a Ford GT using biodiesel and a Ford Focus with a hybrid electric gas system.Aptera chose to go with a lightweight three-wheeled coupe. This was the best funded team of the four.The book is well-written and enjoyable to read. At times I struggled to keep track of which team was which. Eventually, Edison2 elbows the other teams out of the narrative and takes a more prominent role in the book. I think that's because the team leader was a big robust character all by himself.The narrative itself drags and lacks the suspense of a good climax because of the design of the competition. The tests happened over a series of weeks in June and July of 2010. The winner was announced later in September.There are bits of the subtitle sprinkled in the book about how to revive innovation and development in America. The goal of the X Prize is encourage that kind of innovation and forward-thinking. As the prize rules got muddled for the automotive competition, so the narrative of this book got muddled.Disclaimer: The publisher provided me with a review copy of the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this book to be very interesting and an excellent read. Jason Fagone covers four of the teams trying to win the 10 million dollar X Prize to build a vehicle that can get 100 MPG and pass numerous challenges along the way. Building this vehicle is only part of the difficulty for the teams. Rules of the contest constantly change, costs mount, and to meet deadlines while trying to maintain any semblance of a family life is almost impossible. The most interesting part for me was learning about aerodynamics. I highly recommend this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ingenious follows the stories of four teams competing for an X Prize to be awarded for building a high-efficiency, reproducible automobile that could go at least one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. It's a quick read, approachable, full of interesting characters and their sometimes offbeat ideas about how cars could or ought to be made. Focusing largely on these four teams between the prize announcement in 2007 and early 2013, it touches only very lightly on two related trends during that same time period: the rise and at least near-term success of Tesla and the debut and increasing sales of commercial electric cars from Chevrolet and Nissan (the Volt and Leaf respectively).Ultimately the book is a little bit unsatisfying, but that is largely due to the unsatisfying end of the contest itself. The rules were changed often and were very complex, meaning there was no clear and obvious winner over the several phases of the contest. And the future is also unclear: there's no indication of any kind of commercial success or even commercial viability for any of the competing designs.This is a popular history recommended for anyone interested in automobiles and auto technology.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Every once in a while you have to ask yourself why it is we read books. Sometimes we do it to be transported into different worlds. Sometimes it is to gain new perspectives. Sometimes it is to learn more about a subject. Sometimes it is to be moved into action. Sometimes it is to meet new people. Sometimes it is to see new places. Sometimes it is to be wrapped up in a narrative. Sometimes it is to hear a tale worth being told. Sometimes it is for no other reason than we just like to read. But, at its core, the reason we read is to be entertained. That entertainment can result from any of the things I have listed above (and a whole lot more I have not), but it is about being entertained. And the amount of enjoyment we experience with any individual book is the predominant decider for why we like a book, hate a book, rank a book, refer a book, or return to a book.This introspection came about as I was reading ingenious by Jason Fagone. Fagone has taken on the impressive task of following four teams as they compete for a $10 million prize to be awarded to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel 100 miles on a gallon of gas (or the energy equivalent). Fagone follows four different teams as they put together their cars for the competition. They are the stories of inner city youth, of well-funded corporations, of entrepreneurs, and small teams from remote towns. They are stories of triumph and struggle. And the story leads us all the way through the competition. A fairly straight-ahead concept, wouldn't you think? Well, Fagone's approach and style does not result in the narrative I expected. In fact, by the time I was halfway through, I was beginning to wonder if there was a story to be told. Fagone does an excellent job of providing character – there are back stories and descriptions and details galore. But they come at the expense of the underlying story. In fact, there are so many characters with so many details I found myself backing up in order to remember who was being talked about. (From Dostoyevsky this I expect; from a non-fiction book – not so much.)And, in the process of telling these stories I got lost in some of the timelines. One minute we are talking about how a team is doing. The next we are back in history about people involved in the prize. Then we are with another team at a different point in time. The jumps do not come naturally, and they tend to interrupt any narrative that is being developed.But there is an engrossing story here, and it finally starts being told. Unfortunately, the end of the story is somewhat disappointing. In this case, it is not Fagone's fault; it is the fault of the nature of the contest. No spoilers from me here, but it all comes to an end not with a bang but with a whimper. Following the end of the contest, Fagone then provides us postscripts for the individuals involved. This serves as a reminder that the prize was not meant to be the end, but the start – and things may well be moving forward.So why all the introspection while reading this book? Because I was fully prepared to give this book a so-so rating (three stars, maybe less) – again, too much character, not enough real story. And yet, after reading the book (heck, while reading the book) I began looking around at the roads. I was watching the gas guzzlers (including the one I drive.) I was looking at the bulk that made up the vehicles we drive. I was looking at how many single rider cars were travelling the roads. I was looking at the pollution. I was finally noticing everything wrong with our current need for huge, metal behemoths intended to provide transportation, ease, and luxury at any cost.This book made me think. The book forced me to take a new perspective on my preconceived notions. The book may well move me to action. The book made a difference.I'm not going to say I like the way Fagone approached this subject. But I am willing to say that his approach and style did have an impact – a positive impact on the need to change the way we think about our cars. I would suggest you read it – partly for the characters, partly for the stories, but definitely for the thoughts you may start having.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overall I thought is was an interesting book. The way that the author presented the facts made it feel as though it was a well researched unbiased view of the events.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Jason Fagone's Ingenious tells the story of Peter Diamandis' efforts to effect innovation in the realm of efficient automobiles. Ingenious documents the Automotive X-Prize the second effort of Diamandis' foundation to direct innovation. This competition's goals was to bring to market a fuel efficient car capable of 100 MPGe that was also affordable and safe. The swarm of gas sipping chariots were lured to the track with a $10 million dollar golden carrot. A meal fit to bring the car out of the garage and into your driveway. Ingenious focuses on a subset of the X-Prize competitors that reflects the diversity of the participants. You'll meet massive teams like the venture backed Apterra. Or the young shop kids from the West Philadelphia High school. They lacked experience and funding compared to their competitors but arrive at the track with a beast of a car ready to race. One of the principal points of view in Ingenious is through the eyes of Kevin Smith, the archetypal outsider innovator. Founder of Motor Works, Kevin's team competed under the name team Illumaniti. Kevin is exactly the type of competitor that Diamandis hoped to lure with the his ostensibly democratic competition. While Kevin is educated as an engineer ,his professional experience kept him far from the automotive industry. Nevertheless, Kevin's car is a hand crafted beauty of an artisanal vehicle. Built from essentially nothing, with no external funding, as far as this reader could tell, Team Illumaniti was hardly expected to be competitive.The last primary protagonist I'll discuss is from the Edison2 team. One step closer to the modern method of innovation, Edison2 was founded by Oliver Kuttner. A Virginian real estate developer Oliver believes strongly in the necessity of developing the next generation of manufacturing. His belief is that it is crucial to not solely develop individuals bringing ideas and concepts to drive innovation. But that to be successful we must maintain or recreate an environment where those with the real physical knowhow, necessary to bring ideas out of the ether into reality, are coexistent with the idea people. Overall I strongly recommend this book. It is well researched and rarely feels written from an unfair perspective. Its greatest strength is to keeps foisting the reader towards a new champion. By the end the author's favorite is clear, yet throughout the majority of the book I found myself, at one time or another, rooting for each of the protagonists. The challenge is meaningful. The prize worthwhile. The outcome could have far reaching consequences. Will there be a winner? Can a handful of innovators come up with something remarkable enough to shake Detroit? Pick up Jason Fagone's Ingenious and discover for yourself.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Well-written book that tells the story of four teams that were competing for the X-Prize for efficient cars. I felt like this was a good combination of personal profiles of the teams (both highs and lows) and the technical details of the cars. The only minor issue is that the story becomes a bit discombobulated due to following 4 drastically different teams. It makes sense for the plotting of the book for it to be this way, but it can be difficult to keep track of the threads.Well worth reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I knew very little about the automotive X prize before reading Fagone's account. This book takes a look at various teams with an "embedded reporter" angle, and Fagone becomes observer-cum-confidant to the teams that he chronicles. His writing style is very much like a written color commentary and features obvious traits of his magazine article roots. The descriptions are often flowery and add a little panache that makes these "characters" come to life on the page. The eccentricities, egos, and boisterous nature of the team principles that he follows really provide great shadowing for the story of an otherwise poorly run competition and the antics of those competing. As others have noted, the jumping around in some sections is disorienting, but once you realize that he's jumped back in time, or switched to another team, then it is easy to recognize where it fits in the timeline. As it approaches the actual competition, it is much more chronological and covers all of the teams he followed in a more parallel manner. In all, I enjoyed Fagone's writing style, even though it was more "long magazine article" than "written history". I think it gives a good account of the automotive X prize, the lackluster reception in the public and media, and follows up with the teams he covered after the dust settled and the money was dolled out.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I absolutely love these types of books (non-fiction, recap of discovery or innovation). I compare it to Skunkworks by Ben Rich. It is also like a combination of a Henry Petroski/Bill Bryson book.That being said, this book was OK, but not great. It's a fascinating story with some fascinating individuals. However, the story is told in a somewhat confusing way that makes this book a little difficult to follow. That's the major fault. However, Fagone does do a good job of building the story and giving a good sense of the people involved. Worth reading, but not worth rushing out to get.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is really a fascinating book, and made more so because it is a true story. I don't know too much about what makes cars work, but I am very interested in two of the highlights explored here: (1) the hands-on education with students which allows them to use their own talents to explore their potentials because their interests have been peeked and they are respected for their individual intelligence and creativity; and (2) the desperate challenge our world has to find better ways of meeting the automotive requirements of our populations so that we are also creating a healthier/greener planet. Author Jason Fagone is a journalist who has taken us the readers along on his very real investigative journey from the beginning of an exciting event to be known as the X Prize worth a total of $10M in prize money for newer and better automobiles with such conditions put on the finished product that it can reach 100 MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent) as energy can and does come from different sources. Fagone focuses on four or five teams who are vying for the prize money, and each has a different approach and more or less access to deep financial support. This is a fast-paced story with lots of detail into the designing of the latest automotive technologies as well as into the personalities of the contestants, with the most attention being given to the individual who headed up the winning team. I was hoping to enjoy this book, but was truly surprised at how much I did enjoy it and how much I was educated in the process; it truly gives a better understanding and respect for all of the ingenuity involved at every level of the production process. Also of special interest are the historical notes and inspiring quotes that Fagone weaves throughout the book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Reading "Ingenious" right after reading "Drama High" was instructive. "Ingenious", by James Fagone, is the story of a high-stakes X prize competition for building high mileage cars: 100 MPGe. Using the contest as the central plot line gives "Ingenious" a dramatic tension and flow noticeably missing from "Drama High". The book follows four teams as they prepare for the various challenges the contest poses. Each car must be able to accelerate to 60 MPH within 15 seconds, must meet certain handling criteria, etc., and then average 100 MPGe. The contest also requires each vehicle to meet certain requirements for distance. Mr. Fagone begins by following each team separately as they design, build, and test their cars. Then he weaves the stories together as the teams compete head-to-head during the contest challenges. Perhaps the key to the book's charm is that the author choose his teams wisely: an advanced electric car maker, a team of West Philadelphia shop students, an entrepreneur from Virginia and an underfunded couple from Illinois farm country who build their entry in their barn. All these teams have interesting personalities and each approaches the contest in a different way. It makes for compelling reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ingenious is an excellent view into the competition of one of the X prizes and takes you behind the scenes with four different teams as they try to make a car that can get 100 MPG. The book as a whole follows four teams over all stages of the prize and is an interesting insight into the triumphs and struggles as well as personalities of these teams. The book also delves into the technical side of each team's approach and attempts to explain some of their thinking.I really enjoyed reading about the different teams and enjoyed watching them progress. Dues to the sheer number of members on each team, at times it was difficult to keep them apart. However as a whole I found the book a nice blend of technology and human interest.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The automobile industry stagnated decades ago. In 1908 the Model T Ford got 25 miles to the gallon. A century later the average American car gets only 28 miles to the gallon. In contrast only 66 years after the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane in 1903, astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. It seems that once the car became big business the automobile companies no longer risked innovation.Despite all of the romantic stories told about him, the truth is that Charles Lindberg flew across the Atlantic to win the $25,000 offered by Orteg Prize to the first person who flies nonstop from New York to Paris. Inspired by the transformative power of such a prize, space flight enthusiast Peter Diamandis created the X Prize in May 1996 offering $10 million to the first team that could launch three passengers into space to an altitude of 100 kilometers, bring then back safely to earth, and do it all again within two weeks. Attracted by the money and glory of winning, billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson financed the engineering genius of Burt Rutan. They won the prize in October 2004, and now Virgin Galactic—the world’s first commercial space airline—is selling tickets for tourists to visit space.Could such a prize invigorate innovation in the automobile industry? In April 2007 Diamandis announced the draft rules for the Automotive X prize. The rules continued to evolve, but always focused on demonstrating a practical car that achieved a fuel efficiency of at least 100 MPGe. Two years later the X prize foundation announced 111 teams had been accepted as official entrants. The unlikely stories of several teams unfold in this engrossing book.With the help of his childhood sweetheart and wife Jen Danzinger, Kevin Smith quit his boring job with the EPA to spend all of his time and all of their savings creating Illuminati Motor Works and building the “battery operated dreamboat” in Diverton, Illinois. Could a teardrop shaped, gull winged, electric powered dreamboat from a 1930’s classic car show have any chance?Real-estate investor and automobile enthusiast Oliver Kuttner formed Edison2, the “Team Favored by Physics,” to build the “Very Light Car”, in Lynchburg Virginia. Using a custom machined light-weight lug nut to start the conversation, he inevitably ends the conversation by explaining “The car is light because the car is light.”High school students from The West Philly Hybrid X Team, an after-school club, entered two cars in the competition as they posed the question ”Can High School Students build a car better than Detroit?” They had reason to be optimistic, the team had already won the Tour de Sol—an international competition for solar powered cars—twice. Aptera Motors was a California startup financed by $50 million in venture capital. They pursued the X Prize to win the credibility their three-wheeled electric car would need for a successful launch into the market. The book is a thrilling joyride. It is a wonderful celebration of innovation, invention, engineering, risk-taking, adventure, creativity, courage, and total commitment. It reinvigorates the lost American traditions of engineering—daring to take the risk to build something new and useful because we can; because we must.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ingenious is the story of driven (there’s just no way around car metaphors in this society) tinkerers. They still exist, but the outlets for their creativity are fewer and fewer. Between monolithic industry and monolithic government, it’s just harder to break out. This is the inside story of several teams that competed for the X Prize for cars.It was a rocky road, with ever changing rules, ever changing demands, ever changing requirements, and of course – underfunded participants. Jason Fagone, who fortunately for all readers is not a car or racing fanatic, visited and followed them as they designed and built, tested and ran their exceptionally green vehicles.Even the grand prize money got halved, as additional categories were included later. The winner received $5 million, intended to help commercialize the winning design, but of course almost all the money went towards backfilling the gaping pothole the project created, and the car has yet to see anything like production.The hands down outstanding character in this drama is Oliver Kuttner, a man who continually defies characterization, let alone stereotyping. He is many things to many people, and his actions, reactions, attitudes and demeanors can never be assumed. His passions run deep, his skills are many, and his team deservedly wins, thought the victory is at best bittersweet (which for spoiler reasons is all I can say). He is fascinating.That a bunch of guys (and the occasional spouse) in places all over the country can design and build cars that get four times the mileage of the major manufacturers says lots. Not to dwell on the negative, it says we still got it. We can summon up the ingenuity and desire to creatively destroy an industry – if it weren’t such a monster.Ingenious reads like a reality show, cutting back and forth between the teams, focusing on individuals and moving on. Our culture in a nutshell.