Zerocarbonista

The Wind Car is on its way -
video update part 2

Filed under: Transport — dale October 20, 2008 @ 9:06 am

Here’s the second of our monthly video updates on the Wind car project.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

I’m off to Norfolk next week to take a look at the proposed body modifications and generally have a catch up with the team. I’m looking fwd to it.

Chassis has been lengthened, battery housing and transmission are now designed and under construction and we’re very slightly behind the estimated timeline, but still heading for Dec on the road.

Meanwhile out in the world, where so much is changing lately - I hear Tesla are laying off staff and suffering some kind of financial difficulty raising doubts about their future.

Regular readers might remember that a guy from Tesla posted on this site. I’d questioned their performance figures and he basically said it works and I should buy a Tesla and not bother building a car of my own. He turned out to be vice president of sales or something, but I could see some sense in not reinventing the wheel and all that. So I said I would buy a Tesla - if he let me drive one first to prove the performance claims. A fair offer I thought, but never heard back from him.

Sat here today, with doubts circulating over their future, only 27 cars on the road after all these years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, I’m glad I’m not sat in a queue for a left hand drive Tesla, that might or might not one day arrive. It makes sense to have been pursuing a different path.

That said, I hope the dot com guys have the pockets to pull Tesla through, the world is a better place with them in it for sure.

17 Comments »

Any chance of a solar ‘top up’ system to increase range or even just to supply internal instruments (like the Aptera) such as AC/GPS/MP3 Player/Alarm/Demobiliser ?

I’m also thinking an electric motorbike will be a piece of cake after this beast!?

Comment by Chris — October 22, 2008 @ 1:42 pm

What’s the fastest this car will go? and how long will it keep that speed up? I’m no boy racer but if the car has a top speed of 70mph and can only last a few miles at this speed I suspect people will get very frustrated very quickly.
By the way I think what you’re doing is fantastic and wish you all the very best with it all.

Comment by Justin Noe — October 23, 2008 @ 8:27 am

Dale,

I am very interested in the car, i personally think that everything about ecotricity is brilliant i truly can not believe more people do not know about its green credentials. Unfortunately i can’t seem to get the video to work i am assuming that a few other people are finding the same reason hence the lack of comments. Can’t wait for the next update.

Jonathan

Comment by Jonathan Collyear — October 27, 2008 @ 8:18 pm

Hi Chris, we have looked at it, trouble is the amounts of power are so small it really would be tokenism - we’ll have 35kWh of power in the main battery, that’s a shed load of power and truly would dwarf a small solar panel. I guess more than anything else we want to avoid things the media can possibly take issue with/slag off as being impractical.

Electric motorbike is also on my mind… Toss up between that and the tractor next…

————–

Hi Justin, we’ve limited top speed (by design) to just over 100 mph - it’s about a balance of speed and endurance as you say. Our feeling is that exotic speeds over 100 mph are a bit academic and 100 mph is a kind of emotional watershed that qualifies this as a ‘real car’. Range should be 150 miles plus, but I don’t have a figure at 100 mph - it will be less though.

Cheers.

Comment by dale — October 28, 2008 @ 12:41 pm

Hi Jonathon

Sorry to hear you can’t view the video - I will email you about this for more info.

In the meantime - the youtube version is now available here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPa7V7YcVQ

Best regards
Paul

Comment by paul — October 30, 2008 @ 11:30 am

I have a friend at the Ford design and test facility in Essex that tells me that Ford has NO plans to make hybrid or electric vehicles. This short-sightedness is very depressing. I hope after Dale finishes his little toy, he can put his engineers to work making a more consumer/practical vehicle. Shame that Tesla might go under. They were the only manufacturer inspiring the imagination in this space…

Comment by Chris Goff — October 31, 2008 @ 4:54 pm

Great that you are getting into electric cars.
When your staff see you with this car they will want one too.

So why not install charging points at all your offices and give a grant to any of your employees that buy a electric car.
They could have your logo on the side of the car as well.

The Ze o from the Nice Electric car company is on the market right now at around £14000.
This has a range of around 50 miles I am sure most of the people that work in your offices live closer than this?

Comment by David hicks — November 13, 2008 @ 5:29 pm

Good to see that someone else is moving into the electric vehicle market, there must be more opportunities than the present car manufactures see. Motor bikes are a great use of this technology, ive been riding around sheffield for the past 18 months on a vectix and its been brilliant, the only time i need to call in at the garage is to check on my tyre pressures! So ecotricity power is being used in the transport sector already, lets hope that this increases as more people get to see its advantages. By the way, you dont need to worry about charging stations, a long extension will do. Cheers colin.

Comment by colin thomas — November 16, 2008 @ 10:46 am

Dale
I have driven the Tesla Roadster in London. Very impressive. It would be good if you could improve on the 150 mile range to equal or exceed the Tesla range of 244 miles. I look forward to viewing your car.

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Hi Dale,

I’m really happy to have come across your blog and found out about this project. One of the arguments I hear time and again about electric cars is that they are no fun. And as car makers aren’t coming up with the goods I’m so glad that someone is working on it.

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Thanks David. We’re cooking up an idea to get some charging posts around the town we’re based in (Stroud) and some bike parking outside our offices/train station - where there is none, can you believe that?

Somebody told me this week that Nice have just gone into receivership, haven’t seen it in the news myself but the guy was an EV expert, so I’m sure it’s right. These are hard times to sell green or premium things, I think that’s going to hit the EV and EB (Bikes) sector hard in the next year. Only a hiccup though, nothing can prevent EVs from ultimately replacing the ICE car - IMO. Cheers.

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Thanks Colin, I very tempted to make a bike next, before the tractor. Cheers.

——————————–

Thanks Derek, I wonder did you drive the Tesla for 244 miles? Has anyone? We think the claims made are a little exaggerated probably. When setting the spec for our car we considered it more important that 99%+ of all journeys by car in the UK are less than 100 miles, we felt that therefore a 150 mile range was a good target. Destination charging will allow trips of up to 300 miles in that case. Thing about all this is it’s constantly changing. What can be done today (range wise and charging speed) will be doubled in a few years - for sure. Cheers.

Comment by dale — December 15, 2008 @ 4:38 pm

Dale

Thanks for the reply. No I only drove the Tesla for a short distance around Belgravia Square London with an invite from Tesla at the Society of Motor Manufacturers HQ. The Tesla was featured on Top Gear last night. You should be able to log on to http://www.bbc.co.uk to run the programme.

Look forward to driving your car

Derek

Comment by derek thomas — December 15, 2008 @ 9:21 pm

Yes i heard that Nice had gone bust
I also heard that Teslar a are in financial difficulties

The future of the electric car depends on the oil price.
At the moment its gone too low and people will loose interest
in electric cars because petrol will become cheaper.

There is some hope with project “Better Place” in Israel.
Much also depends on the bail out conditions of the American
car industry if the bail out has conditions like “they must make electric cars” It could be good.

There is a fundamental reason the car industry does not want electric cars. Electric cars have very few parts compared to ICE engines, and electric motors are very reliable.
So the car industry wants to sell us spare parts and the oil industry wants to sell us oil.
Why would they want a electric car?

I compare it to Dyson making a bagless cleaner. The cleaner people were not interested because they just thought about the bag sales they would loose.
Dyson had to make it himself.
So Dale well done for following his example
If you cannot buy what you want make it yourself.
Keep up the good work in promoting electric cars.
David
A Toyota Prius owner who would love to buy a real electric car.

Comment by David hicks — December 16, 2008 @ 11:04 am