I do like Dan R’s suggestion of “Viento”. Throwing my two cents into the mix (if its even worth that) to appease Damon what about the name “Whisper”? Its probably too feminine but the Cherokee in me likes it because I like to think that the wind whispers to us (if only we would stop and listen more often).

“Davince”

Pronounce it any way you wish!

Les

My choice for your beauty:

“Wattson” for all sorts of reasons.

Paul Watson (my hero)
Unit of power
“Elementary, Watson”
Son of Watt as in Williamson, Johnson, evolving from..

Would love to get involved… keep up the good work…

Les

Having said all this, my suggestions are:

“Vertigo” (the sensation you get from a wind turbine / French for green, then “I go”).

“Natrix” (Latin name for a grass snake, which is green. There is a long tradition of naming sports cars after snakes – cf. AC Cobra, Dodge Viper, etc).

Hope this helps,

Jonny Holt

e.g. ‘z e d c e e’, ‘e l v e e’, ‘e l c e e’

Quite clever eh? It becomes a double-acronym. The only thing is thinking of something: Electric Vehicle by Ecotricity is then ‘e v e’ (pronounced ‘ee-vee’), EV also standing for Electric Vehicle. That’s the best I can do at the moment.

The wind car vids look great, can’t wait to see the one with it on the road, is it on YouTube yet?

As for the name, how about a funky zero
inspired word for which the web address is not already taken, e.g. zerotricity

yanza.com

http://www.fieldlines.com/comments/2009/1/14/144558/363/3#3

Rgds

Damon

The fambly, macho, SUV truck market is being cracked by these guys in the US….

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/index.php

I personally had great hopes for this 3-wheeler and would have purchased one myself if it could be made real for the UK market… with say a top speed of 125mph and a 300 mile range… and less naff colours, dated wheels and a sorta geek kit feel… say more like the Smart EV’s will be. The perfect EV for the city, green-minded uber-babe…(sniggers)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsg_iEQzfWk&feature=related

And (Phil — January 11, 2009 @ 12:50 am)

I suggest you take a looksee at the wonderful Mr. Ebenhoech converted 914…

http://www.cafeelectric.com/index.php

This could be the way ahead for millions of cash starved, depression surviving energy depleted Brits… come 2013 when the lights start going out…. that will be the smart ones only naturally… that have converted their homes to heat producing net energy ones, selling back to the National Grid… who’ll have quit all mainstream rip-off foreign goct controlled utilities…

Only the seriously silly will imagine a ‘normal’ consumerist, flat screen plasma future… albeit defo not if held to ransome for water, heat and daily working energy!

(Get self-sufficient folks you know it makes purfecct ‘meow’ sense)…

Postscript: Or perhaps Gordon McBruin will finally wake up to the Peak-Oil issue and make these on-your-every-street-corner govt mandate?

http://dvice.com/archives/2008/11/hyperion_starts.php

Regarding the car itself, it all looks very interesting, but I’m left with a nagging doubt. Given the millions of cars that already exist, wouldn’t it be more efficient to develop some sort of aftermarket process for retro-fitting electric motors to our current fleet? The wind car is undoubtedly a useful headline grabber, but shouldn’t we be thinking about ways to shift the current fleet over to cleaner, more efficient methods of propulsion rather than just binning them altogether? Why are we not seeing such a sector emerging, as to my mind it would seem to make sense.

Dave

ps battery technology is advancing ridiculously fast at the moment, see http://www.a123systems.com/ and http://www.altairnano.com
I fully expect that batteries will have decent lifetimes and safety in the next 5 years or so. However, we do need to worry about lithium supply, and also battery end of life recycling.

pps on names for the car (sorry, should have contributed earlier) how about Spark, Arc, Flux – that sort of thing?

Answer to your feedback about hydrogen vs. EVs:

The hydrogen fuelling station I saw in Rekyavik a few years back looks great and could be duplicated around the world with potentially less environmental impact than the environmental cost of duplicating long range batteries on a global scale.

I have no doubt that currently the use EVs are cheaper/more accessible etc than hydrogen but if one projects EVs en mass (i.e. we all use them instead of ICEs) we could have a resource problem with the battery manufacturing side which may outweigh the other obstacles which the hydrogen economy brings. This is of course based on the future scenario of Renewable energy powering the hydrogen extraction.

Ref your question about transporting hydrogen: Hydrogen like biomass is a more storable and flexible as a fuel compared to other renewables of variable supply. (Hydrogen is therefore similar to a battery in concept – but batteries always expire whether used or not – Ive had 2 electric vehicles now so speak from a position of experience).

So hydrogen faciltates a storage solution which enables our demand to be matched with intermiitant renewable energy supply in a way which could be less damaging than batteries – if scaled up.

Dave I dont know if that is the case for sure because Ive not done the maths on the lifecycle impact of mining the specialist battery resources that would be required but what I’m trying to impress upon you is to not close your mind to the hydrogen solution. If you know of a study which details the CO2cost of long range batteries I’d be interested. A good independent survey may swing my thinking back towards yours.

Regards
Adrian

As for ourselves, we went through a list of about about 400 names (including “Nemesis” and “Zero”) before finally settling on Persu.

NEMESIS: Mazda RX-8 special edition brand. Trademark for motorcycles is owned by Norton, BTW.

ZERO: GM had a design collaboration with architect Frank O. Gehry back in 2005. One outcome of that was the “Zero Car” The produced a full-scale working prototype with omni-directional driving ability. May not be trademarked.

STORM: Mazda again… This time for a rather boring pick-up truck.

Email me if I can be of any further help.

– Ian

- Clark

But as we’ve had weeks of persistent high pressure sitting atop Blighty recently… biting winter cold it is but no wind at all… oh dear?

(Fusion via Helium3 starts to look more like the next gen saviour; peak uranium means nuclear is also temporary)

The Venturi Fetish works for me name wise… but you’d need Monaco like weather to cope with the lack of roof… lol

I do hope your offering will make use of Altairnano lithium wafer power… if not ouch!

My name suggestions… as you favour the powered by wind aspect…

1. Autan
2. Bayamo
3. Chamsin
4. Dzhani
5. Etesian
6. Khamsin
7. Levante
8. Mauka
9. Sharki
10. Vardar

Or if you do have to keep with that Zee theme too… Zephyr or Zephyros… Zonda’s already nabbed!

Happy New Year to you all and good luck with it…