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World’s First Wind Powered SuperCar is On it’s Way

sustainable design, green design, sustainable transportation, ecotricity wind powered car, dale vince, alternative energy, renewable energy

Seeking to expand the horizons of future-forward transportation, Ecotricity founder Dale Vince has set out to create the world’s first zero-emission, wind powered supercar. The vehicle is based upon a heavily modified Lotus Exige that has been retrofitted with an electric engine that will be charged completely by the wind!

sustainable design, green design, sustainable transportation, ecotricity wind powered car, dale vince, alternative energy, renewable energy

Dale has been keeping track of his progress on his blog Zero Carbonista as he transforms the supercar into sleek electric vehicle capable of running on the wind alone. Of course, at this point you are probably wondering why? After all, competing companies are currently developing and a whole other array of other vehicles. Dale’s reason?

“The car is meant to be a demonstration of what can be done with technology available today – ie stuff that doesn’t need inventing for the next decade. Since we started the world of EV’s has really got fired up and all the big car makers are talking about making them now it seems. Good stuff but still it’s just talk.”

+ Ecotricity

+ Zero Carbonista

6 Responses to “World’s First Wind Powered SuperCar is On it’s Way”

Andrew Leinonen Says:

June 2nd, 2009 at 12:38 pm

It’s sort of funny that this one, like the Tesla Roadster, is also based on a Lotus chassis.

Seems like these guys would have been better off buying a roadster and focussing on the wind-power part…

PaTrond Says:

June 2nd, 2009 at 2:38 pm

Of course it’s a Lotus Elise when it is something radical or innovating in the wind..
Well, windpowered car is not something I believe will be a success. The wind doesn’t give enough energy to power more regular car while driving continuously/ non-stop.

tomm Says:

June 5th, 2009 at 5:32 pm

let me get this straight. It’s an electric car. That can be recharged from a windmill when it’s home. Brilliant.
I’ve just invented a water powered car (patent pending). It’s an electric car. That can be recharged from a watermill generator. God, I’m such a genius.
I’ve just invented a wind powered oven (patent pending). It’s an electric oven. That can be supplied by a windmill. God, I’m such an uber-genius.
I don’t deny their work in designing an electric sportscar, but the wind power, it’s just plain bull****.

nommo Says:

June 19th, 2009 at 6:50 am

Hi all,

I have been following this project on the blog from the start so I can offer up a little clarification and a few more details:

Dale Vince founded Ecotricity – the worlds first green electricity company over a decade ago.

This wind powered car is based on a Lotus Exige. Reasons? It was made in the UK, it is lightweight and well engineered (the same reason Tesla use Lotus Elise as a base). FWIW this Exige ‘base’ car was bought off Ebay second-hand.

It may be worth noting that Ecotricity also have planning permission to build a couple of big turbines to power the Lotus production factory in Hethel in Norfolk.

When Dale spoke to Lotus about making an electric car a few years ago – they were already in discussions with Tesla. It was a close one!

As well as building wind farms and generating green electricity, Ecotricity also supply business and domestic customers with green electricity across the UK.

Tesla VP of Sales posted on the Zerocarbonista blog and tried to convince Dale to join the waiting list for a Left Hand Drive Tesla – Dale was only interested if he could get Right Hand Drive, plus get a test drive to put range and speed claims to the test. Neither of those happened.

Ecotricity have been working on a small domestic ‘urbine’ in an attempt to provide a direct way of charging from the wind in addition to UK customers using their Ecotricity mains supply to charge their EVs.

The main point of building this car was so that Dale could have his own Ecotricity powered EV that wasn’t a pedentary ‘Noddy’ car, whilst simultaneously demonstrating that it shouldn’t take decades of R&D by the big car companies to come up with a decent, high performance and fun electric vehicle, which he is doing on a tiny fraction of the budget even Tesla spent…

They may do a limited run, but mass manufacture and going into direct competition with Tesla or Dodge/GM/Ford etc was never the intention….

windcatcher Says:

July 31st, 2009 at 4:49 pm

Mathematically speaking, the air intake does not have enough volume and energy to run even a forced air Baker Wind Turbine at 60 mph. E= 810 ft. lb. per second @60 mph. which is about 1.5 hp. Per sq. ft. Windcatcher