Ecotricity designs wind-powered sports car

A wind-powered sports car? Sounds like a perfect whipping boy for Top Gear. But Ecotricity’s
Dale Vince is deadly serious – and he thinks Clarkson might just love it…

The starting point, explains Vince, was a need for new wheels. “A couple of years ago I wanted to buy a car that was greener than mine, so I went out looking for an electric model – and I just couldn’t find a decent one, not one that didn’t look like Noddy’s!” Combine this irritation with his growing sense of a looming oil crisis – and his first-hand experience of green electricity production – and the challenge was born.

“If we could electrify every car in the UK we’d make whopping cuts in CO2. We’d also save about a third of our oil imports,” says an opportunistic Vince. If everyone were to plug in, we’d also need a 12% increase in grid-delivered electricity, he estimates – which would “require 10,000 windmills”.

So did he go for a G-wiz-style sensible run-around? Hell, no. It had to be a sports car – to capture the public’s imagination, he says. “We wanted a car that would bust the stereotype wide open.” Sporty also made sense in terms of fuel efficiency. “Because it’s electric you can’t carry dead weight; you need a light car.” The technology would be pricey too; so that’s more justifiable, he says, with an exotic car.

The initial model is being developed for the man himself, but the idea is to make a limited number – say 10 or 20 – which they hope will spark new thinking among car manufacturers. “It’s a challenge to them. We’re saying: ‘Come on guys, get your fingers out, because if we can do it – and we’re, like, a tiny company of environmentalists – what are you waiting for?’”

But the ‘tiny company of environmentalists’ does seem to be pulling it off, starting with an old Lotus Exige bought on eBay as a donor car. “We took out all the internal combustion bits, took off the body, made it longer, lower and better balanced.” With British car designer Peter Stevens onboard to help, Vince reckons it will do 0-60mph faster than a Ferrari. He also claims its lightness and handling of corners will outstrip the Exige.

Creating the new technology has proved the trickiest part. The car works using 90 “very lightweight, energy-dense” lithium iron polymer batteries. These are housed in a carbon fibre and Kevlar container, designed to monitor the voltage and temperature of each cell, with built-in cooling and heating. They’ve added their own “body controller”, a computer to control the car, “two big fat motors” and a flash dashboard complete with thumbprint recognition. There’s even a fancy re-charging connector, which Vince likens to a Hoover: “Open a flap, grab a plug, pull it out, plug it in and away you go. And it self-retracts,” he says proudly.

Vince envisages drivers fuelling up at home, first through the grid and eventually via their own domestic microgen. “You could conceivably plug in at home, with one or two mini-wind turbines on your roof, and know you’re your own petrol station.”

Ecotricity is on the case with that, too. The company is developing the Urbine, a small-scale turbine which, once out of R&D, could provide enough electricity for 5,000 miles of driving a year. Of course, micro-turbines haven’t been famed for super-efficiency... “We’ve invented something quite special,” replies a confident Vince. What’s different about the Urbine, he claims, is the vertical, rather than horizontal, axis. This means it doesn’t have to turn to face the wind – especially important in an urban environment, where wind is much more multi-dimensional due to surrounding structures.

The car, meanwhile, should be road-bound in July. The prototype’s costing a few hundred thousand pounds, but subsequent cars are expected to be a lot cheaper. There would also be savings in running costs.

But will the Top Gear boys like it? Vince hopes so. “I want them to get out of the car, a big grin on their face, and say, ‘If this is the future of cars, count me in – because there’s no sacrifice here, there’s nothing missing.’” – Claire Baylis

Ecotricity is a Forum for the Future Partner.

1 May 2009

Claire Baylis