Oliver Kuttner and his Edison 2 team are reinventing American ingenuity, something he believes needs to happen with the decline of Detroit and the loss of manufacturing jobs across the country.

Kuttner and his team of mechanics and engineers have designed the VLC — the Very Light Car — a prototype vehicle which gets more than 100 miles per gallon off a gasoline engine.

The design garnered the Edison 2 team the coveted X Prize, for which the team collected a $5 million prize to continue to develop the VLC, which looks like a space age vehicle.

The front of the car.

Edison 2 had two of the prototypes at the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research in Garysburg today. It was a return trip for the ultralight car which was the first to burn rubber at the center’s test track.

“The X Prize is the ultimate science contest,” said Kuttner, an engineer, who bases Edison 2 in Lynchburg, Virginia. “The competition is driven to foster innovation for the good of mankind.”

Three years of work went into developing the car that competed against 111 other vehicles in the X Prize Foundation contest.

At the end of the contest, the VLC got 102.5 miles per gallon and had the lowest emissions of any gas powered or electric car, Kuttner said. The car also passed strict safety standards for side impact collisions.

Kuttner believes some of the ideas that went into development of the VLC will be seen in cars five years from now.

He describes the car as minimalist, a car where the fuel efficiency isn’t in the design of the engine but the car itself.

The name of the company is a tribute to Thomas Edison, to the original Edison labs, Kuttner explained. “I’m fascinated by the story of the light bulb and we thought we were going to manufacture an electric car.”

Instead, the car was gas powered, fueled by a gasoline and ethanol mix, being able to run E-10 or E-85. “In many ways E-85 has greater potential for America. This car can be electric, it can be diesel. It’s efficient because it doesn’t take energy.”

One of the biggest implications of this car, Kuttner notes, is that when the car goes into production, parts are going to have to be made. “The benefit is, we have to make everything. We, as Americans, have to be the one to make the parts and put us back to where we were in the auto industry.”

Kuttner knows about industrial decline because he comes from a textile family. “All we did was watch the jobs go away. I think it’s a disgrace. If we continue to do this America is going to get the short end of the rope. I believe we have come up with a product that will make a great industry.”

The NCCAR logo is on the VLC.

That’s why Kuttner supports the NCCAR project. “It’s perhaps the best facility in the United States for what it offers. It gives you a repeatable facility.”

Before the project began, Brad Jaeger, an engineer with Edison 2, thought about the implications. “When it first started you thought about it a lot, that you’re reinventing the automobile.”

When it was time to build four cars, however, “You stopped thinking about the potential when you were so focused on getting the job done.”

With the X Prize won, the team can now think about the potential again, Jaeger said. “The technology you can put in these cars today is something that’s going to take some time.”

Like Kuttner, Jaeger believes in the potential the VLC has. “We want to bring the auto industry in the United States back to what it was and return to being a strong nation.”

Bobby Mouzayck is a mechanic with Edison 2. “It’s the most challenging project I’ve worked on,” the mechanic of seven years said.

Edison 2 is a team of friends, he said. “Working with Oliver, I’ve never had somebody invest in me so much. It’s something you can think back on.”