The Google Lunar XPrize might yet turn into the first road race on the dusty plains of the Moon.

Two of the 18 surviving teams contesting the Lunar XPrize have announced they intend to have their Moon rovers race against each other on the Moon. The winner of the race will claim the Lunar XPrize's top prize award money of US$20 million.

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Spoiler alert. Don't expect any roaring start or fast acceleration in this race. The first lunar road race will be slow and will crawl along because of the Moon's weak gravity.

U.S. team Astrobotic Technology backed by Carnegie Mellon University and Japanese team Hakuto backed by Tokyo University have agreed to run this historic race and crawl to a finish line 500 meters away. Astrobotic's lunar rover is named Griffin while Hakuto's lunar rover doesn't yet have a name.

Under the rules of the Lunar XPrize launched eight years ago, the first private team to land a robot on the Moon and move 500 meters "on, above or below the Moon's surface" before the end of 2016 will win US$20 million.

Google's revised official XPrize rules say teams should set a flight date not later than December 3, 2015 and reach the Moon by the end of 2016.

Astrobotic is reported to have reserved a launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle for October 2015, which means Hakuto's lunar rover will be making this trip with them along with two other teams. Astrobotic and Hakuto agreed to share the space ride to split the launch costs and have some prize money left over.

"When we get to the surface, we will deploy our rover and deploy Hakuto's rover, and then, together, we will drive off as fast as possible to win the Google X Prize. It'll be a full-on race once we get there," said John Thornton, president of Astrobotic.

"The reason why we chose Astrobotic is partly that we are planning to explore the lunar caves, the skylights," said Hakuto's leader Takeshi Hakamada. "Astrobotic also has a plan to land close to a skylight."

Hakuto aims to finance its Google Lunar X PRIZE mission from advertising expenditure of large global companies. It's named after the white rabbit in Japanese mythology.  

The XPrize is sometimes referred to as Moon 2.0.