The engine, called the X2, will be available as a beta prototype for outside testing by the first quarter of 2013. The engine is able to achieve more than 50 percent efficiency under typical operating modes, while typical diesel engines usually achieve less than 20 percent efficiency.

The X2 is a new type of engine architecture, based on a rotary engine. LiquidPiston CEO and President Alexander Shklonik told met in an interview that this new version of the rotary engine is more flexible and can thus be more efficient when optimized in the right way. The engine is smaller, lighter, and cheaper, with ten times fewer parts, than current diesel engines on the market, says Shklonik.

Shklonik told me in a phone interview that the first applications for the engine won’t be the mainstream automotive industry, but will be industries like defense, long haul trucks, plug-in vehicle range extenders, and other more niche markets. LiquidPiston has raised $12.3 million so far, and tells me that it’s looking to raise another $20 million later this year. The company has around 12 employees.

Other startups that have developed more fuel efficient engines include EcoMotors, Pinnacle Engines, and IRIS Engines. More efficient engines will be used in both the next-generation of cars sold in developing countries, and also countries like the U.S. that have new fuel efficiency standards. The Obama administration passed the CAFE standards, which require a fuel efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

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Klein also showed off the new finishing of the box, which has been improved to be more resistant to fingerprints, as well as other design features. Watch the entire video below:

The first Box arrived from the Boxee Factory from Zach Klein on Vimeo.

Boxee CEO Avner Ronen didn’t want to point fingers when the company was forced to delay its date of sale last month, but the delay of NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 chipset likely played a big role.

Update: A Boxee spokesperson informed us via email that Klein misspoke and that “the Boxee Box will come out in November.  If that changes we will make an official announcement on the blog and with D-Link.”

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Today the MIT Clean Energy Prize has named the 24 semifinalists (hat tip Mass High Tech) who have a shot at winning the grand prize and basking in that spotlight in May. These teams — selected by a panel of judges from academia, industry and government — represent what the contest organizers see as “some of the most promising clean energy technologies and business ideas coming out of universities this year.”  What are the ideas for cleaning up the transportation sector? They range from renewable fuels to bike sharing tech. Here’s a look at the five teams that made the cut in the MIT Clean Energy Prize transportation category.

Agavenol: This team out of Arizona State University envisions using drought-resistant agave plants as a feedstock for ethanol in Southwestern states, “avoiding transportation of feedstock from the Corn Belt states.” The group aims to combine “current agricultural strategies with novel biotechnological research,” in order to improve agave plants and “related processing” as a feedstock. As part of the business model described on its web site, Agavenol offers training in agave planting, growth and harvesting.

Bio-re: Coming out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Bio-re describes itself as, “Thinking for the future…A future where renewables are the norm.” We’ve reached out to the team for more details on the project.

IRIS Engines: This group, representing Johns Hopkins University, aims to develop a more efficient internal combustion engine that mimics the iris of an eye. By switching up the internal structure in such a way — allowing its diameter to expand and contract – the company says it can build a powerful two-stroke gasoline engine at costs comparable to today’s typical four-stroke engines, with up to twice the efficiency.

ViaCycle: In bicycle-loving Copenhagen, a contest for bike-sharing concepts late last year drew a whopping 127 concepts from five continents. In the MIT Clean Energy Prize, just one group working on tech for this type of mobility-on-demand system (explained in depth on GigaOM Pro, subscription required) made the cut: ViaCycle, out of the Georgia Institute of Technology, which says it has created an “advanced bicycle sharing technology that allows easy deployment of affordable sustainable transportation.”

The ViaCycle team’s system uses GPS to track the bikes and allow administrators to set boundaries on the usage area, and enables users to unlock a bike via text message (rather than having to manually check out a key). According to an article this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the team already won a $50,000 grant from Ford and the system is set for deployment at Emory University this year.

Vecarius: This team out of MIT describes itself as “a seed-stage company that seeks to leverage advanced materials, power electronics, energy harvesting, and energy storage technologies to increase the energy efficiency of vehicles.” Cool stuff.

This type of tech doesn’t have the glitz of an electric sports car — it’s meant to go under the hood, unseen, in models that look and feel much the same as the same old gas and diesel vehicles now on the road. But considering that conventional vehicles will likely make up the bulk of automakers’ lineup for years to come, the array of MPG boosters now in the works could help them meet tightening fuel economy and emission requirements for their fleet. Whether and how much car companies end up betting on young ventures for this tech remains to be seen, but these seven startups aim to seize that opportunity in coming months and years.

Image courtesy of Transonic Combustion.

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Chief executive Levi Tillemann-Dick, who currently makes up half of the Washington D.C.-based startup’s full-time staff (one of his 10 siblings, president and chief technology officer Corban Tillemann-Dick, is the other half) told me he sees the nascent markets for hybrids, plug-in hybrids and extended-range electric vehicles as a key opportunity for the company.

“These vehicles are often used as platforms for new technologies,” Tillemann-Dick explained, and a very small, efficient and power-dense engine like the one IRIS is developing could help increase the range and overall efficiency of a car like the Chevy Volt (currently, General Motors says the model’s gas-powered  ”range extender” affords up to 300 miles beyond the 40 miles of all-electric range).

Secret Sauce:
The key element of the IRIS engine design (the brainchild of the IRIS executives’ father, Timber Dick, who died in 2008) is a system of valves and vents that allows the combustion chamber to expand in diameter, rather than length. IRIS claims this expanding diameter means 70 percent of the surface area of the engine chamber can “react productively” to combustion, which is to say, by moving.

In a conventional engine, the company claims only about a quarter of the chamber’s surface area is productive — the rest is passive. You can think of it as reacting wastefully, by heating. (Another startup, Clean Tech Open finalist Alphabet Energy is tackling waste-heat recovery for automotive and other applications).

Growing Competition:
IRIS, previously known as Tendix Development, represents just one of a growing number of ventures chasing after tech for a more efficient internal combustion engine. Khosla Ventures-backed EcoMotors, for example, is working on a two-stroke diesel engine, and sports car maker Lotus unveiled a 1.2-liter range extender engine-and-generator set at last fall’s Frankfurt Auto Show.

Tillemann-Dick contrasted IRIS’s “somewhat radical design” with what he calls “Lazarus projects — things that have died for some reason, and now one engineer or a group of engineers think they can make it work this time.” IRIS anticipates plenty of competition, however, from advanced vehicle technologies. For example, “If someone came up with an absolutely terrific battery,” Tillemann-Dick said, “that could be a competitor.”

Dash for Cash:
Many hurdles lie ahead for IRIS at this early stage. Tillemann-Dick said IRIS has “prototyped some of the subsystems,” but it still needs to spend “a significant amount of time and money integrating them.” To fund further development over the next two years or so, he said IRIS aims to raise some $14 million in investment over the next six months.

Upon completing development (in collaboration with engine development and testing firm AVL), Tillemann-Dick said IRIS expects to spend about six months to a year working on licensing agreements with original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs. So in an optimistic scenario, the startup’s first revenue wouldn’t come in until around 2013 or later.

If the design pans out (some questions remain unanswered about how to minimize friction at higher temperatures and cycling speeds) and delivers the efficiency IRIS believes is possible, Tillemann-Dick said, “Everybody from Ford to Honda to BMW will sit up and take notice.”

The Track Record:
Big talk from a small startup? Well, yeah. But IRIS has hit the ground running, with awards in several business plan and technology competitions (the total comes to more than $100,000, from sponsors including venture firm DFJ Mercury, Dow Chemical, ConocoPhillips and NASA). In addition to its contest winnings, IRIS has worked out a deal with the law firm Perkins Coie, which Tillemann-Dick said “has put in a substantial amount of work — hundreds of thousands of dollars worth — on the contingency that we will pay them back when we get funded.”

For their advisers, the Tillemann-Dick brothers have won over (among others) former Daimler-Chrysler executive Eric Ridenour, and Daniel Yergin, the founder and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates who chaired the Department of Energy’s Task Force on Strategic Energy Research and Development.

Road Ahead:
These votes of confidence may help open doors for the company, but even if the technology works as IRIS expects, it could take a lot of convincing for an OEM to make the investment to test out and ultimately adopt the startup’s tech. “It’s the same infrastructure, fuel and techniques,” Tillemann-Dick said, but, “integrating a new powertrain always requires a substantial amount of work.”

Making that bet on an unproven startup wouldn’t be an obvious decision for most automakers. As Tillemann-Dick noted, the industry has traditionally avoided “switching horses until they’re absolutely forced to.”

These days, he sees that pattern changing. But IRIS plans to cover its bases. It’s in talks with some undisclosed companies now about deals outside of the licensing model. And Tillemann-Dick said IRIS will likely pursue other applications such as generators, unmanned aerial military vehicles and racing, where players are “more willing to take risks on cutting edge technology.”

Graphics courtesy of IRIS Engines

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I ended up tweeting about my audio predicament, and was immediately offered ways on how to fix the problems. Sadly, none of them helped with the audio but they did help restore the system performance. However, since then a lot of people have described a whole myriad of problems associated with this OS upgrade — some have mentioned display problems, others are complaining of slow speeds and many are like me: their computers are without sound. Apple’s support discussion forums are chock full of complaints (though on the flip side, the OS X 10.5.7 does boost the battery life of netbooks.)

If you are a Mac owner, I would say don’t upgrade to the latest OS version…at least not ’til the problems are solved. I am off to the Genius Bar to see if they can fix the sound.

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