The competition at the Automotive X Prize event at the Michigan International Speedway is heating up and the list of teams still in the race is narrowing down. In fact, there have already been a few teams eliminated from the competition.

A few teams didn’t make it past the initial Shakedown phase in early May, with Team FourSight and Wikispeed failing to move beyond the technical inspection. (See “A tale of two teams--Wikispeed, FourSight”).

At the end of the Shakedown, Global E- Pulse received a “probationary” pass to the Knockout phase, but it wasn’t able to improve their car in order to pass inspection. Team Cornell received a “conditional” acceptance after the Shakedown phase to move forward, but ended up withdrawing from the competition on Monday due to problem with electronics that monitor the battery power. (See embedded video.) K-Way Motus (see video interview) and Liberty Motors have also both withdrawn from the competition.