As predicted, the Automotive X Prize crossed the century mark for teams signed up to compete in the "Ultimate Fuel Economy Challenge." While we know that not all of these teams consider themselves to be real contenders, the fact that there are so many people ready to spend so much time and energy thinking about a 100+mpge vehicle is pretty astounding.

Early next year, organizers will begin weeding out teams that don't qualify for the next round. The X Prize foundation says that over 120 teams, from 28 states and 17 countries, have already signed up for the competition, which will kick off next year and contains a cross-country stage race that will hit up to ten cities. There's no word on how many teams might be left after the pruning, but they'll certainly bear watching. Undeclared teams have until January 1, 2009 to sign up.

[Source: X Prize Foundation]

We're really high on the Automotive X Prize, and it was an easy choice as the number one upcoming green event. The Auto X Prize will be worth ten million, and is sponsored by Progressive Casualty Insurance. We've covered everything we know about the X Prize on these pages, and we've even got an entire category regarding the event, which ought to make it pretty easy to follow from here on out. Anyone got a favorite already?

We had a heap of posts on the Progressive Automotive X Prize (that still doesn't quite roll off the tongue) following the big announcement from New York last week. In the flurry of posts, it may have been easy for someone who doesn't check AutoblogGreen with an F5-trigger finger fanaticism might have missed some of the big news. Therefore, after the jump, you'll find a list of all the posts we did about the Auto X Prize from New York. The video above features the highlights of the press conference, and all the pictures we took can be found sprinkled throughout the post. If you do have that itchy F5-finger, then check out the video, since it's new. After the jump you'll also a lot of links to videos and press releases from the X Prize Foundation itself.

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If the person being interviewed in the picture above looks a little bit young, well, that's because he is. He's a student at the West Philadelphia High School Academy for Automotive and Mechanical Engineering, which is fielding the youngest team of entrants in the Progressive Automotive X Prize.

I had a chance to speak with the teacher in charge of the program, Simon Hauger, who talked about the three (or four, depending on how you count) green vehicles the team has worked on over the past nine years. From an early converted Jeep(s) to the Hybrid Attack you see in the photo gallery, the team knows a few things about greening up a ride. The team took a K1 Attack and modified it to biofueled hybrid that won the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association's Tour de Sol twice. Can high school students win the Auto X Prize? They certainly have the passion, as Hauger describes. For the X Prize, the team is working on another vehicle, this one a plug-in diesel hybrid. The team says the car will exceed the 100 mpge requirement "without sacrificing style, safety or affordability." That's the dream, right?