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Title details for Ingenious by Jason Fagone - Available

Ingenious

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

by Jason Fagone
Adam Verner
Audiobook
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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."

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 5, 2013

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781452696935
      • File size: 348928 KB
      • Duration: 12:06:55

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      There's more than enough pathos in Adam Verner's performance of this story of engineering creativity, but it sounds oddly disconnected from the drama of the events. Though his near perfect phrasing and articulation make every syllable clear, his hushed intensity sounds forced, often making the colorful writing seem artificial. The story is about teams of engineers who compete to build a car that can go more than 100 miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. With plenty of technical details dotting the narrative, the book seems aimed at car buffs and tinkerers. But as it moves toward its conclusion, the energy shifts from the technical triumphs and setbacks to the growth of one team leader into someone introspective and, ultimately, humanitarian. T.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 14, 2013
      Freelance journalist Fagone shadows four intriguing teams battling to win the X Prize, a grant of $10 million awarded to anyone who builds an efficient, mass-producible car capable of traveling 100 miles on a gallon of gas. Fagone says he’s “not a car person,” but he glowingly describes the X Prize’s creator, Peter Diamandis, whose challenge has encouraged more than 300 teams to go head to head for the honor. The author, with assistance from the contest’s committee, selects his subjects for their diversity. They include love-smitten Harry and Jen, who are working on a fiberglass body in a small Illinois community; a group of spunky West Philly school kids, who are building a pair of hybrids, with one earmarked for poorer drivers; Oliver Kuttner and his well-bankrolled Virginia team; and an ambitious California startup called Aptera Motors, which is building a sleek aerodynamic car. The book benefits from the author’s depiction of the labor and lives of its colorful, driven contestants of TV’s Dancing with the Stars. Anyone interested in how automobile dreams are born in this postbailout economy will delight in this fast, engaging read. Agent: Larry Weissman, Larry Weissman Literary.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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