I work in the Ecotricity offices in Stroud and live in Worcestershire, a daily commute of about 51 miles in each direction, assuming that I take no detours on the way home. My normal mode of transport is either a diesel VW or a motorcycle that each do around 50mpg for the journey (over £12 per day in fuel).

Well, the chance to drive a car like the Nemisis was too good an opportunity to miss so of course I welcomed it with open arms, I mean the chance to drive a super car that would do 0-100mph in 8 seconds doesn’t present itself every day!

So then the reality dawned on me, this was a prototype that hadn’t been used much more than the few miles from Dale’s house to work or the odd test for promotional purposes and now I was planning to do over 100 miles per day including a 25 mile stretch in each direction on the motorway. The first thing that I did was to get my warm coat and the numbers for the recovery company as I fully expected some late nights sitting on the side of the M5 waiting for a recovery truck.

I tentatively took it on its first trip home from Stroud about 3 weeks ago and spent the whole trip watching the volt reader on the dashboard as I didn’t think it would get me home, every sound convinced me that it was about to come to a painful halt and leave me stranded.

I got it home and put it on charge. That meant running the cable the 5 feet from the parking place in my rear garden to the wall socket that was to be the charging point – it was on charge quicker than it would have taken me to open the fuel cap on my VW and put the diesel gun in the hole. As I generally don’t use my vehicle in the evening it was no big deal, I just left if on charge until bed time when it had charged enough to ensure that I would get back to Stroud the next day.

The next morning was pretty straight forward, no worrying about whether I had enough fuel, just get in and drive. The only change to normal was the lack of a heater or radio but a pair of gloves and my iphone soon sorted those issues out.

By about the 3rd day of commuting I found that I had stopped thinking about how many volts were left on the battery, no more than the odd glance at the fuel gauge in my own car anyway, and I was able to relax into simply enjoying driving a small sports car. The practice of charging it when I get home at night and again when I arrive at work added little to my journey time and soon became the norm.

I didn’t realise how much the charging routine had become the norm until last week when I needed to take my VW to work and upon leaving home at 5.45am to go to the gym before work, I found the fuel light was on and I had to find a petrol station that was open at that time – what a pain that was. I had very quickly become confident that I didn’t need to even think about it in the electric car and the experience was literally the opposite to what I had expected when I started driving it.

I do get a buzz from turning heads when I drive the vehicle as it does look special and sounds unlike anything else on the road. As for the performance, the only way I can describe it is like putting your foot down in this car as being similar to a jet accelerating down a runway! The sound and the sheer torque of the power delivery is a very similar experience.

I do take every opportunity to take friends and acquaintances for a drive in the car so that they can experience the drive and spread the word, but I need to mention one particular occasion when I took a friend out in the car who races cars on the track and works at a BMW dealership. He had the opportunity to drive an Audi R8 only the day before and when I took him in the Nemesis and let him experience the acceleration, he just sat there astonished by the sheer thrust and felt that he needed to re-calibrate his own understanding of what could be achieved as it simply blew the Audi out of the water!

After 3 weeks of commuting to work, plus some weekend leisure driving I have now covered over 1500 miles in the car and the biggest compliment I can give it is that it’s nothing out of the ordinary! It is just a very quick 2 seater sports car that happens to be powered by electric. It has a range of around 100 miles and with a charging point at work I am able to easily make it fit into my normal daily routine, even with my longer than average commuting distance to work.

I certainly would consider having an electric car as one of the two vehicles in my family. My wife could easily use an electric vehicle as her daily car as she rarely covers more than 100 miles per week.

I know that if we were to do longer journeys for holiday or visiting family who live in the North of England, then we would currently need to use a conventional petrol/diesel engine, but I am certainly a convert and as the Ecotricity Electric Highway becomes more widespread and fast charging technology becomes the norm I see no reason why my next car will need to be anything but electric.

I would like to try a normal saloon car like the Nissan Leaf for a week or two to see how they compare when you have the additional benefits of rear seats and some boot space as if I’m honest, that is all I have missed during this experience.

Nissan had lent me one for a while and I was impressed, so impressed I wanted to get one. Partly to use myself, for trips my motorbike isn’t so suited to, partly also to get a better idea of how life with a mainstream all-electric car can be, and I wanted to see how realistic it might be to replace ecotricity pool cars with electric cars, anytime soon.

Several weeks later and I have to say I love it. It’s a really cool car to drive, and I simply love driving without burning anything.

My son Rui (4 now) loves it too. He plugs it in for me, works the Sat Nav and all that stuff – you know like four year olds do these days…

In stark contrast, Kate, my other half – hates it (or she did). I was just saying one day what a great car it was and she just went all Clarkson on me – “as long as you don’t want to go anywhere” she said in a rather strident and mocking tone, strikingly reminiscent of the old fossil himself. Ouch.

Then along comes the ‘Fuel Crisis’…. and next thing I know, Kate is boasting on Facebook, about not needing to get in garage queues, oh yes – she went from Clarkson to Swampy in a heartbeat. That made me smile…

There’s a serious point here though. Things like this ‘Fuel Crisis’ make the case for electric vehicles, even to the ‘Clarksons’ of this world.

It was a revelation to us – having an electric car made the ‘Fuel Crisis’ rather irrelevant; it was a bit of a sideshow to be honest, light entertainment. To be so insulated from this fairly major national trauma, was an eye opener.

I dusted off my motorbike after about two weeks using the Leaf everyday (because Kate needed the Leaf.. ) – and as I rode out the gate I looked down for the fuel light (habit) and it crossed my mind that I might have to go to a garage, to fill up. And it was such an alien concept. It tickled me that after just two weeks of full on EV driving – the thought of going to a garage had become so odd. I’d forgotten all about garages…

The ‘Fuel Crisis’ was of course entirely down to the government; it never needed to happen. But events like this are a taste of the future, for anyone dependent on fossil fuels to get around – that and spiralling costs.

The alternative is with us now.

OK – the technology is relatively expensive, but that’s changing fast, as it does with new technology (think laptops and mobile phones when they first appeared).

But performance and range wise, electric cars are already practical for most of us – after all in Britain, 99.3% of all car journeys are less than 100 miles (the typical range of today’s EVs) and the typical daily distance driven in a car is about 20 miles.

For sure, we need charging infrastructure for the longer journeys, to help overcome range anxiety and lower the barriers to take up. That’s underway; our Electric Highway is a good example of it. Actually we have super fast chargers coming soon – empty to full in just 20 minutes, more on that later.

And we need cheaper cars – that will come with volume and volume will come in the main due to two kinds of factors, the negative kind (like we saw last week and rising fuel costs) and the positive kind (the easing of range anxiety through more widely available charging and good car range).

It’s all a bit iterative of course.

But the electric car revolution is underway.

Aided, last week, by the Fossil Fools. In Whitehall…

Cheers.

Their aim was to demonstrate and promote the recently invented motor car. In addition, they celebrated the new Road Act, which that year raised the speed limit from 4mph to 14mph and removed the need for a man to walk in front of each motor vehicle waving a red flag. Quite a breakthrough for drivers of the day.

The cars taking part that day included those powered by electricity, steam and the internal combustion engine (petrol): back then it was a three horse race, technology wise. The internal combustion engine eventually won out of course. Fast forward to today and we take for granted the quite incredible travelling capability of modern cars. We Britons collectively drive 250 billion miles a year in our 30 million cars – all but 2,000 of which have internal combustion engines.

But the world is changing. Nobody can have missed the twin issues of Climate Change and fossil fuel depletion. Road transport in Britain is responsible for 20% of our CO₂ emissions, the main Climate Change gas. About a third of our oil imports are burned in our vehicles – some 25 million tonnes each year. Two excellent reasons to make a change.

On top of that, and perhaps more importantly for your average motorist – petrol and diesel are escalating in price and will continue to do so as the world runs out of oil. It was only two years ago that we hit the £1 per litre mark, at the time quite a traumatic event – how much further past that are we now – and how much longer before we hit £2 a litre? My guess is less than 5 years.

So we need an alternative to the car as we now know it.

And it’s ‘back to the future’ in fact – with electric cars making a comeback. So far the numbers are pretty small: a little over 2,000 of them in Britain. But all the major motor manufacturers have now either launched a fully electric car, or will do so later this year. You can go out and buy one, they’re just like ‘real cars’ – with some obvious differences.

Upsides and downsides of course. Upsides are a lack of pollution from the exhaust and the possibility of filling your car up at home – even making your own fuel from solar panels on your roof. The main downside is range. Cars hitting the roads this year will have a range of up to 100 miles, and to many of us this sounds like nowhere near enough. There’s even a name for the feeling many people get when contemplating electric cars – ‘range anxiety’.

The fact is we’re all used to driving cars that can cross continents. But we don’t use that capability. In Britain, 99.3% of all car journeys are actually less than 100 miles. Range anxiety is thus misplaced, though still having a very real impact.

People are also concerned about a lack of charging facilities on the road, somewhere to plug in. There’s actually a chicken and egg problem going on – one of the big reasons more people don’t buy electric cars is due to a lack of places to charge-up and companies are not installing places to charge-up due to a lack of electric cars on the road.

And that’s where our Electric Highway comes in. It’s the world’s first national network of charging points – it’s for electric cars and it’s on Britain’s motorways. We’ve completed phase one already, joining up the cities of London, Exeter and Manchester. Phase two will be completed this year and will see ‘top up zones’ at every Welcome Break motorway services in Britain.

They’re currently free to use, all you need – apart from an electric car, van or bike, is to register with us for a free smartcard (to access the chargers). We’ve created the Electric Highway to kick-start Britain’s electric car revolution – because we thought it needed doing.

Later this year we expect to install the first of a new breed of very fast chargers – from flat to full in 20 minutes. At a stroke electric cars will have overcome their only real drawback – their ability to travel great distances, and refill very quickly. It’s an exciting time for electric cars – perhaps on a par with 1896, when the new Road Act made cars suddenly rather more practical as a means of transport.

Nationwide rapid charging will achieve the same thing for the electric car.

[sociable /]

You may have read about already it in the Sunday Times this weekend. You shouldn’t have, but they broke the embargo on our story three days early for some reason – perhaps they’re a bit keen for stories that don’t involve phone hacking. Bless….

Anyway – Why are we building this Electric Highway? There are after all only some 2,000 electric cars on the road today. In fact that’s a big part of the reason – a lack of demand.

It’s often said that one of the reasons more people don’t buy electric cars is because of a lack of charging facilities – while the reason more charging facilities aren’t built is said to be because not enough people are buying electric cars – classic chicken and egg stuff. We’re hoping to break that impasse.

And at the same time another barrier to the faster take up of Electric Cars – is something called ‘range anxiety’ – the fear of running out of juice when doing any kind of serious distance.

So this is where the Electric Highway comes in, a national network of charging posts, installed on Britain’s motorway network; national facilities for electric vehicle owners – and long distance journeys. We’re hoping it’ll help kickstart Britain’s electric car revolution.

We chose the motorway network for good reason. The big focus to date, with charging posts, has been town and city centres – I think this is actually where they are needed the least. Car use statistics, point to this.

The average car in Britain does maybe 20 miles a day, a distance that most modern electric cars can sustain for almost a week without needing to charge. And most car owners have access to off street parking (70% apparently) – and therefore are able to charge at home, at night. Most cars won’t need to charge, most days. It’s the longer journeys where charging is needed most.

We’ve chosen where the power for this network comes from carefully too. The Electric Highway will be wind powered – and in doing this we’re making a serious point. Britain needs to switch to electric cars as fast as we possibly can – but that alone is not enough. Where the electricity comes from is vitally important. Electric cars need to be running on renewable energy sources, the power of the wind and the sun – only then does their full potential become realised – zero emission driving.

And can we do that as a Nation? Can all of us drive wind powered electric cars. The stats say yes.

There are 30 million cars on the roads of Britain, between them driving 150 Billion miles a year and burning some 20 odd million tonnes of oil. Oh and producing 70 million tonnes of CO2 (12% of our total emissions) in the process. Incredible numbers but we could power all of that with just 10,000 of today’s windmills and 5,000 of tomorrows (they double in size every few years).

And can the grid take it? It would require an increase in electricity delivered through the grid of about 12%, far less than most people think. And for context, pre the credit crunch, grid delivered electricity grew by around 3% a year (so we’re talking just four years normal growth to power all the UK’s cars). And most charging will take place at night, at times of low demand. The grid can easily cope, in fact if Britain switched to EV’s the grid would operate more efficiently.

And consider this. One of the truly revolutionary aspects of electric cars is that we can all be our own oil companies – we can make our own electricity – and power our own cars. A typical 5kW roof top solar system, for example, could provide some 5,000 miles of driving a year – pollution (and fuel duty) free.

Given this, perhaps in due course, the ‘anxiety’ around electric cars will pass from motorists to the oil companies – and maybe the government.

I’ve been meaning to post something before now, but the last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. Here’s a quick heads up, some stuff you might know already from the news, some you probably won’t.

The car arrived in Stroud nearly three weeks ago now (Tuesday the 28th Oct) looking simply awesome. It was the first time I’d seen it in it’s finished form, complete with grey and black union jack paint job and all sorts of other bits and pieces – it really is transformed from the car that was here in the summer of 09 – for a few months.

The day after the car arrived I took the Sunday Times out for a spin. They loved it and published a piece the following Sunday. I haven’t put a link here, because you have to pay to look at it (I guess Murdoch needs the cash to fight the evil BBC).

The Friday of that same week I went for a spin with Robert Llewellyn. That was a bit scary truth be told – never knew he had such a heavy right foot… . Actually, what made it (more) scary was that each time he hit the throttle hard, or came off it, the car twitched, we had a bit of torque steer going on (which was unusual). This turned out to be an early symptom of a problem that would show itself later. Robert made a short video of our spin, which actually was a hoot – you can see that here.

The following Monday (after the Sunday Times piece) I went for a spin with a guy from the Press Association and the torque steer ‘twitch’ under the big right foot of Bobby L, turned into a permanent pull to the right under more moderate acceleration – the problem was developing. I thought it probably something to do with the motor controllers and made a mental note for the engineers to rectify when they next have the car.

And then the next day (fatefully) I went for spin and shot some video with John Vidal from the Guardian. John wrote this piece which appeared in the Guardian the following Friday. And he posted this video on their website.

As you’ll see (or you may know already) the Nemesis broke down……..!

We were on our way to our local windmill to take the final shots of the day, and as we crossed a mini roundabout we just lost drive completely. Had to get out and push, I think he kept filming for a while, in true professional style……

And bless him, he said he wouldn’t use the breakdown as part of the story, didn’t feel the need. I thought that was quite lovely. But the temptation was obviously too much, as you can see or read in the G – it became part of the story.

That wasn’t really a surprise, it was a bit disappointing, but it was understandable. What was a surprise was the stuff that was actually made up – the claim that the Nemesis is known as the ‘Beast of Stroud’, for example – it certainly isn’t, and the first I heard about it was in the Guardian. I think that’s stretching journalistic licence a bit too far.

Anyway, one of our engineers dropped everything to blat to Stroud and take a look (Thanks Bob). The problem was with a small 12 volt battery that drives the motor contactors (the electro mechanical bits that pass the big currents to the motors) – it had gone flat.

Turns out that the diode used the charge the 12v from the main 400v traction battery, had blown. The component was well within design specs, so we suspect a fault in the diode itself – we’ll see. The falling voltage in the 12v battery caused the motor contactors to behave erratically – that’s the working theory. So far it’s holding.

With the problem solved we were off the next day (Thursday) to London for a launch party for the car and for our Ecobonds (I’ll post about ecobonds later, promise).

The party was fab. Probably the best bit for me was that Damon Hill turned up. Here’s a picture.

The next day we were off to Brighton to get ready for the RAC Eco rally, which started the following day (Saturday). The rally ran from Brighton to London, the day before the historic event that runs the other way round. It was fun.

The car park of our hotel was like a spaghetti junction of cables and junction boxes, as the fleet of cars re charged over night – at least in theory anyway. There were obviously some electrical load issues – the Nemesis left that car park after 12 hours of charging, with less in the batteries than we started with……. nice….

But no problem, we still had plenty. We all lined up along Brighton Sea Front and left, kind of race style, at 30 second intervals – somehow we managed to be car 63 of 64.

On approach to the start line an RAC guy came up to the car and said something like ‘can you spin the wheels or something all these Teslas are being really boring’. The wheels won’t actually spin (something we’re looking into, we think there’s some very conservative torque control going on) – but I told him I could ‘boot it’.

And boot it I did. Not too madly, since the start was arranged with a bottleneck of people just in front of it. Short phone video here for your amusement.

And with that we were off to London, my least favourite place in the country to drive to – not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to this.

Before long we found ourselves in the most amusing and frustrating convoy of eco cars. All competing to use the least energy on the drive, which is fine in theory. But in practice it meant these guys would do 30 mph on the flat (in a 60) and when they hit a hill they were doing 20 (not wanting to use the throttle). It was funny to start with but that wore off.

We even saw drivers wiping the inside of their windscreens, because they wouldn’t use their screen demist (we assumed). We had no such problems, the air inside the Nemesis was the same as the air outside (v cold)….

We saw our chance on a long straight and blew off a convoy of eco cars – blimey the Nemesis can accelerate, I was well off the throttle before we reached the lead car…….

Although I can see why the RAC set this event up based on a challenge of efficiency (I think the petrol based cars had to use less than one gallon for example) – I actually think this is the anti message – Eco cars that are not fast or fun, (and if you meet one on the road it’ll be a pain in the arse) but they are economical – it’s the worst possible message, just re enforces the stereotype.

My suggestion for next year would be a balanced approach that requires some semblance of normal road speed and economy – much more of a challenge.

Anyway we got through some hideous traffic and made our way to Regent Street for the line up. And we were mobbed. The Nemesis kind of stole the show. That was fab.

So here we are three weeks later. I just charged the car last night and it was truly plug and play – no laptops needed – just pulled the old three pin plug out of the flap at the back, and that was it – chuffed about that…..

We’re still waiting for the fast charger though, it’s two months overdue now. But we’ve been busy with CAD and have ‘packaged’ the fast charger to fit in the boot – so that all we’ll need for a super fast charge, is a three phase supply. We’ll have no hardware compatibility issues.

After we get the next few weeks of publicity out of the way we’ll draw up plans for the speed record run and for the endurance run – Land’s End to John O Groats, which we’re going to aim to do in less than one day (less than 24hours). That should be a hoot. More on all of that later.

Cheers.

^{Video production: TWA Productions}

A day at Bruntingthorpe

Two weeks ago now we took the Nemesis to Bruntingthorpe, for it’s first real track day.

We had two purposes, to test safety followed by speed.

The safety aspect was about the stability of the car in the event that one of the motors or belts suddenly quit – having separate rear drives means we have the potential for some considerable torque steer in the wrong circumstances.

So our test pilot took the car down the track at increasing speeds, while the co pilot threw a switch – to disable one motor. The car has a system that responds to the loss of drive on one wheel, we needed to know if it was responding fast enough.

The results were good. In a straight line the impact of losing one motor, even at speeds well in excess of 100mph, was very slight (on the steering).

Later in the day we went on to try the same thing driving hard round bends, and eventually we found the limit and spun the car – but the circumstances it took to pull this off were a long way from real road conditions.

Before that though (while we still had plenty of battery) we did some speed tests…….

Results as follows –

Not bad for our first real test. We reckon the motors are spinning about 10% less fast than they could and we think there’s some torque limit applied by software – because we just can’t spin the wheels…..

We’re looking at both of these and confident there’s quite a bit more in the car yet. Top end and 0 to 100.

While we do that, the car is finally off to the paint shop, we’re packaging a fast charger to fit in the boot (for some distance work) and getting ready to launch on the road in October.

So this is the penultimate episode, our next one should take us right up to the launch.

Finally we’re almost there. It’s a good place to be.

Cheers.

PS – In what must be a sign of the times – there were more EVs and Hybrids on test the day we were at Bruntingthorpe than there were conventional ones. Roll on the day.

So, one night, I was happily drinking my beer and tending to my inbox of endless boring emails that had be answered but were of no real consequence, when Lester, my landsailing buddy texted me a link to fasterthanthewind.org. Lester knows a lot, and if he says this needs my attention, then it gets it. I am not sure if it was how many beers I had had, or simply the inane nature of the quest, but I laughed enough to email all my friends to share the absurdity of their mission. My heart is split between belittling idiots, and saluting eccentrics, and this downwind quest lay somewhere in the middle. These loonies were pursuing a pointless goal, doomed to failure, but there was some genuine merit in the myth and their enthusiasm.

I dismissed it as utterly impossible. Travelling through zero apparent wind, with no stored power? Impossible. Why would you even attempt it? (Though I’m no stranger to that question myself!) But had I been asked to bet at that moment, I would have just lost a lot of money.

A few months later I actually met the idiots in question and, to my surprise and concern we not only have a few mutual friends, but they seemed to be rather technically credible. But, everyone makes mistakes, and I let them off as decent people with a blinkered view of fundamentally flawed engineering….

A few months later they were claiming success and if it was not for another great friend, Bob Dill, advising that they were actually correct, I would have discarded their claim as an April fool. I thought about the possibility that I was wrong, and then considered that as Bob was getting on a bit and had a bit of a shake with his stopwatch finger, maybe it was he who was mistaken. There was, however, a growing momentum of technical people (who should have known better), saying that these idiots have actually proven that it is possible to travel faster than the wind going directly down wind.

Not content, I had to witness this myself. When I heard it was on for the official record at El Mirage, I jumped on a plane and went to check it out.

The video speaks for itself. These guys are not idiots, but sincere, genuine, technical people who took a myth and made it real. It works. It starts from rest, trundles to true wind speed, then powers to a multiple of about 3 times the true wind speed. Bob will confirm the final number I am sure.

To all fellow skeptics, start baking that humble pie, or eat your hat. Your choice

Here’s a video Richard shot on the day he visited.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CcgmpBGSCI

Check out the Faster Than the Wind site for more info.

ETA: Just in case you are wondering at the strange tone in Richard’s post (and references to ‘idiots’ and such) – this story has a lot of history, so Richard is referencing the often heated debates about whether this DDWFTTW idea is actually possible or not. As Wired magazines puts it “The concept known as DWFTTW can cause world-renowned physicists to throw their Nobel Prizes in fits of rage.”

You can check out some of those lengthy & heated discussions in the links below:

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/propulsion/ddwfttw-directly-downwind-faster-than-wind-25527.html
http://forum.mythbustersfanclub.com/index.php/topic,12948.0.html
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=128483

^{Video production: TWA Productions}

We’re getting there….

There was a time when I thought we’d make this car in 12 episodes (actually there was a time when I thought we’d make it in 6)…

But here we are, episode 12 of 6, and I think we’re still a couple of episodes away from completion.

Latest news is that the BMS and the ECUs are both now fitted and the car is back in Norfolk. All that’s left is the pre track and road shakedown testing.

We’re looking mainly at battery temperatures throughout the ‘stack’ to make sure that under heavy load it stays consistent (across the stack) and within the operating range. For me battery temperature and the attendant risk of thermal run away is probably the big risk in the whole car.

But so far so very good.

We’re also going to simulate the loss of one motor at high speed (on a very long straight road) to see if the software can cut the power to the other one (we have one on each rear wheel) fast enough to avoid torque steer and the loss of control that could come with that. This is a very important test.

In more news we’ve finally found a fast charger. It’s been incredibly hard to do so.

But it’s on order now.

I’m hoping to take the car on the Brighton to London Eco rally on the 7th of July. Followed rapidly (I hope) by the track testing (which should be fun) and then the Nemesis should be ‘on the road’.

Then we’ll look at the land speed record….

Hope you enjoy the latest episode and I hope there won’t be too many more….

Cheers.

ETA: This video is also available on Youtube

Meanwhile, on the car front:

The new lightweight rear end and rear diffusers are both fitted and fully functional.

The rear end is now stiffer, lighter and much easier to get on and off. Also we’ve got the new rear lights installed and wiring complete now as you can see from the picture. The back end of this car is def its best side.

The diffuser (the bit that wraps under the car at the back, with the number plate on) has its twin flaps, either side of the number plate, one for normal and one for fast charge connections.

Our guys have been working on something dubbed ‘the Lobster Claw’ which is a cable retract mechanism. Looks rather cool and is about 90% complete. Basically it allows you to pull a three pin plug (or whatever connection we choose) from the back of the car, pull out as much or as little cable as you need, plug in and when you’re done, snatch to retract – like a Hoover (or should I say Dyson these days).

That may sound easier than it is. The tricky bit is to have a cable that isn’t coiled around a drum, because that would get too hot if you left it partially coiled and ran big a current through it. With a drum approach you’d have to pull all the cable out whether you needed it or not.

So with all this work complete the car left Norfolk yesterday headed back up North for it’s final bits of electronic kit – the VCS or ECUs depending on who you talk to. Either way it’s the bit that connects the throttle pedal, the batteries, the BMS and the motors.

It’s a couple of weeks to fit and then a couple of weeks of shakedown testing and some road testing for the BMS at the same time.

Then the car is coming back to Norfolk for its full on track and road testing, followed by the paint job and that’s it. Several weeks later than I hoped for again, but we are getting there, actually making big strides in what has def turned out to be the hardest part of the whole project – the electronics.

Meanwhile we’re planning some ‘events’.

First is likely to be a crack at the UK land speed record for an EV, for that we’ll need to do 140 mph – should be within the ability of this car. The current record is held by Don Wales, grandson of the great Donald Campbell. Don came up to see me a few months ago and offered to help us with the record attempt, which is really cool of him – then he told me if we do get the record we might not hold it very long as he’s planning another run end of this summer – so it’s on…..

Next event on the drawing board is a run from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, in less than 24 hours if we can. Co-conspirator for this one is Robert Llewellyn (I think he’ll always be Kryton to me… ). Our plan, roughly, is to charge at windfarms and other renewable generators as and where we can, but otherwise use ‘ecotricity’ supplied through the grid and blat down from John o’ Groats to LE just as fast as we can in a non stop (other than to charge) run. We’ll need a fast charger for this of course – that’s currently on our shopping list and proving to be quite tricky.

The aim of this one is to tackle the ‘range anxiety’ that currently exists with EVs. This is a classic British endurance run, no EV has tackled it yet (as far as I know) and it should open some eyes, and minds, we hope.

So that’s it – car a few more weeks away from completion and serious testing (and another video update) – and a couple of record attempts on the drawing board.

Cheers.

We get a slick new carbon body, save a lot of weight (where we don’t want weight – the rear) and make the charging kit an easy install. Neat solution.

We’ve also got a new diffuser coming out of the moulds. This is the bit that sits under the rear of the car. It’s being engineered with some nifty flaps to the left and right that pull down to expose the two charging options:

Normal (13A and slow) or Abnormal (100A and fast).

With some changes to the rear lights and to the internals viewed through the rear window thrown in – this part of the car is going to be pretty slick.

News from ‘up North’ is that the BMS (Battery Management System) is ready and we’re planning to ship the car up for fitting and testing next week. We’re also having a new Vehicle Control System (VCS) from the same guys – all of it CANbus connected, which, when you get into the detail of it, looks pretty essential (the old stuff wasn’t).

When we get the car back with it’s BMS and VCS we’ll have pretty well just the interior to do – plus fit the new panels and give it all a quick spray job. And that’s it.

We should be on the road.

The next update should be episode 12 of 6 – in another week or two I hope.

Cheers.

I had my first breakdown the other week. I went to drive away in the morning and everything was just dead. Turned out the 12v battery we use to power the control side had gone flat, and oddly enough a couple of fuses were blown. As you can see from the picture, I got the youngest member of the team on the job, with my own personal favourite ‘spanner’….

And when we’d finished fooling around we called Bob and he came down and fixed it. No big drama but some useful ‘operational experience’.

Actually things have kind of ground to a halt on the Nemesis. It’s been with me since August, for what was meant to be a months worth of road testing while the Battery Management System (BMS) was finished. Three months later I’ve still got the car and we’ve not got a BMS yet. Which is disappointing to say the least. Everything else about the project has gone incredibly well, but for this – and it’s held us up for over six months now. It’s a frustration for all of us, not just me.

The car goes – it goes like hell, it’s just not ‘plug and play’ – by which I mean I can’t just plug it in to charge it. It takes a laptop and some close attention and we’re not able to charge to the full potential of the cells (for safety). So it’s “close but no cigar”.

But we are entering the end game, a BMS is in sight, almost. And we’ve planned the final pieces of work to finish the car – tweaks to the suspension and body, interior decor, paint job and so on – and we’ll do all of this at the same time as the BMS gets fitted. It’s probably 4 to 6 weeks work from the time I take the car back to the team, which I hope will be any day now.

And then the Nemesis will be fully functional, properly plug and play (and with a fast charger I hope) and capable of it’s maximum performance – which we’ve not had out of it yet (incredibly).

I expect we’ll post episode 12 of 6 in January, including (I hope) a revisit to Snetterton where we’ll be trying for a 1 minute 15 second lap – this is the goal we’ve been set by somebody interested in starting an EV racing series. Such a lap time would convince him it’s a serious proposition (range isn’t such a big deal apparently…) I’ve no doubt that if a petrol driven car can lap at such speeds we’ll have no trouble matching it. Won’t be me at the wheel though…

On another front, we know our friends at Lotus keep a keen eye on our progress and it seems like they like what they see – so much so that they’ve created their very own, limited edition, matt black version of the Exige – named ‘The Dark’ (or ‘Stealth’ in Japan). How’s that saying go – about the sincerest form of flattery?

That’s the latest on the car front. BMS breakthrough any day now… Followed by rapid completion and a resumption of testing and the fun part.

Cheers.

Paul here (back off my hols).

A couple of event announcements for our UK based readers. Firstly – I thought you might like to know about a public appearance of the Nemesis Wind Powered Car happening on the 12th/13th September at the Science Museum in Wroughton, Near Swindon in Wiltshire. It will be part of the family oriented Festival of Innovation. I am hoping to be there with my family on the 12th – so might see you there? It is a free event (although high carbon producing transport will be charged £5 to park).

Here’s the event page for the Festival of Innovation on Facebook.

Also – Ecotricity are hosting a kite festival to celebrate the power of the wind on the 13th September 2009.

Help us to fill the sky with kites and celebrate the power of the wind at Thistledown Environment Centre, near Nailsworth (Stroud).

• Free Admission
• 500 kites to give away (or fly your own)
• Explore 70 acres of natural environment and wildlife
• Free soft drinks courtesy of bottlegreen
• Professional kite demonstration

I also created a Facebook event page for the 500Kites event too.

Take it easy, and we hope to see you at one or both

Paul

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Here’s our latest, probably penultimate, video update of the wind car project.

I’ve had the Nemesis (yes it finally has a name) on the road for the last few weeks and it’s been a lot of fun (unless you’re a hedge in my vicinity….:).

I’ll give the car back to the engineers in a couple more weeks, once the battery management system is ready to install and we’ll enter the home straight then. There’s still quite a bit of finishing to do.

I’m hoping to have the car back (and finished) towards the end of Oct, but we’ll see.

Sorry not to have had the time yet to answer a number of questions posted here, hope to catch up soon.

Enjoy….

ETA: This video (and all the others) is also available on Youtube for your embedding pleasure etc.

The car has come a long way in the last few weeks since the first test drive. The last few days have been especially hectic (for the team, not me). It got its MOT last Friday, had a Tracker fitted yesterday and we taxed it today – you wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find insurance… Anyway it’s road legal now. And sat outside my house.

It’s not totally user friendly though. The charging system is the last big thing needing to be finished, the guys are working on that while I road test the car. So recharging is a bit of a manual process, to say the least – balancing the individual cell charges and the like.

And the car has actually only run through one full battery cycle so far, so that side of life is a bit of an unknown still. And it’s not been out in the rain yet…….! We’ve got data sensors and gauges all over the place and one of the things I need to do is to take readings after each run. It’s still a bit of an R&D prototype for sure.

The interior and exterior reflect this – both being a bit rough and ready, good job too (more on that in a minute).

But I’m really looking fwd to just hacking around in it these next few weeks.

Should be fun.

OK time to fess up. I had my first prang in it today. I was coming back home and stuck my foot on the throttle instead of the brake pedal, corrected that but too late to avoid skidding into a hedge…. Ooops.

That’s my first bit of feedback for the team – pedals too close together, especially if you have big feet. It happened to me on the airfield test actually, though nothing came of it with all that space to play with. Of course it’s the standard Lotus pedal layout, minus a clutch pedal, so I reckon we can move the brake pedal leftwards a bit with no trouble.

So there you are. The Wind car is finally here in Stroud, for a few weeks shakedown, and er… I’ve pranged it already… Doh!

Cheers.

PS episode 11 of 6 will be up in a few days.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Is it a Nemesis?

It finally happened. Last Monday on a windswept old airfield in Norfolk, we got the wind car out of the workshop and took it for its first spin on tarmac.

Not entirely without a little drama mind you – the car barely being able to climb the transporter loading ramp at full throttle was a challenging start to the day… but we quickly enough adjusted the bugs out of that and it flew, really flew.

The acceleration is astonishing. I had a run up and down with John Miles (ex Lotus F1 man) at the wheel – OMG! If you’ve ever been on the Oblivion at Alton Towers, that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach as you go over the edge and rush groundward – that was exactly the feeling, and it was relentless.

There’s no power build up, no power curve – it’s on full (especially when John’s driving), and it stays on – until the throttle comes off (and then the brakes burn… ) It’s incredible.

We clocked over 100mph, accidentally, (I mean it wasn’t a speed trial) just running up and down a few hundred metre stretch. And we didn’t spin a wheel, we burnt nothing – not even rubber, more on that later.

The big surprise of the day was the noise – we reckon part Stuka dive bomber and part supercharger, don’t know how well it will come out on film, but this car definitely is not quiet. And I really like the noise it makes.

That takes care of one of Mr Clarkson’s favourite EV ‘worries’ (bless).

Our attempt to test it more fully at Snetterton later the same day was (madly) rained off, as you’ll see in the video. But we’ll be back there in a week or so. By which time we’ll have upgraded the standard brakes (which we cooked) and made some small suspension tweaks. I’m expecting it to be incredibly quick.

The big question will really be how long we can drive it for – that we can’t be sure of.

All the time and care our guys have put into the design and build of this car really is starting to show – I mean to perform ‘straight out of the box’ like this is a real feat. I’m impressed.

It looks and sounds awesome and it goes like hell.

Looking at it and having driven it I really am thinking it suits the name Nemesis.

Very much so.

Cheers.

ETA: This video (and all the others) is also available on Youtube for your embedding pleasure etc.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

This months highlights are;

Meeting the Sun’s environment correspondent – yes seriously. They’ve not had one very long but they do have one and he is serious about it – and:

That amazing machine at Leeds University – the one that looks like it belongs on a Sci Fi film, in fact I’m sure I’ve seen versions of it, recreating humans from DNA samples… In our case we used to make a ‘gear lever assembly’.

As you’ll see here we’re getting close to the end game now, in fact I’m ready to predict that episode 10 of 6 will see me driving the Wind Car for the first time… !

The thing that’s been holding us up this past month or so is the Battery Management System (BMS), in case you wondered. The solution we were chasing kind of fell apart a few weeks ago and we had to hunt around for some new technology. Bit scary this late in the day…

But we’re very much back on track now having found exactly what we need from Linear Technology. These guys went above and beyond by expressing us a bunch of pre production chips and a board, that’s been a massive help. Thank you.

Returning to the question of a name, not sure if this one came up before, but in an e-mail last week I made a quick ref to the e bird (easier to type than wind car), and I kind of liked it. Any thoughts on that welcome.

Other than that current front runners are still Zero, Hurukan and Zephyr.

I’m off to Norfolk the week after next to shoot episode 10 and, hopefully, actually get to drive it – that’s a pretty exciting prospect after all this time and effort.

Hope you enjoy the vid.

Cheers.

PS – This just in – been challenged to a drag race with an RAF Tornado – can’t turn that down, racing for pink slips I hope, winner keeps all… More on this later.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Here’s our latest video.  The big focus of this episode is design and, as you’ll see, it’s definitely taking shape.

I’m off to Norfolk next week to meet the Sun, they love the idea BTW, and nail down a few questions on detail (with the A team).

Couple more weeks after that I hope we might be having our first test drive, perhaps in episode 9 of 6 – but let’s see….

Some really cool names keep coming in.  Though I’m back to thinking maybe zero.  But as somebody said here, I reckon I’ll need to see the finished thing and drive it – then I’ll know its name.

There’s been a lot of electric car stuff in the news lately, particularly today with the Government’s announcement of a £5k bung to EV buyers and other initiatives. 

The thing that excites me most of all though is the fact that the government has come out and said we all need to be driving electric cars, they even use terms like ‘green revolution’ these days – that’s just amazing, so far from where we’ve been.

It makes me think the changes we need to make are all the more likely.  We know the technology exists or will exist and we know we need to live sustainably – now we seem to have political will behind us.

Just need to re invent capitalism to be orientated to social and environmental outcomes rather than monetary ones – and we’re there…..

Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Here’s the latest episode of our Wind Car series, clearly we’re running behind the original plan, with episode 7 of 6…

But hey ho, I don’t suppose the wheel was invented in a day – to mix metaphors a little.

We hit a big milestone in this episode with the first turning of the wheels and John Vidal from the Guardian joining us.

The car still looks a bit of a mess in some ways, a bit like road kill (no offence to the A-team) but the engineering fundamentals are in place now. Current best guess is first drive at the end of April…

Meanwhile we still lack a name. Had two new suggestions this week.

Hurakan – Mayan god of wind and storm and stuff. Quite like that.

And this very interesting one – evince

Meaning to show or demonstrate clearly, to make a point.

There’s a French version of the word apparently – evincer – meaning to conquer entirely, to prevail over, to prove exhaustively.

That has some resonance for me – what do you guys think?

Cheers.

Back in the UK now. I’ve been on holiday for a week, which is a rare event (ask my partner… ) and sod’s law determined that an even rarer event would coincide with that – the perfect conditions for a land speed record attempt.

My disappointment at not being there though was marginal compared to the huge excitement of the result – the smashing of the record.

All the credit for this goes to Richard Jenkins of course (with just a little to the gods of wind… ).

Richard’s the guy who’s been pursuing this dream for a decade. To say he’s dogged would be an enormous understatement.

I’m really chuffed for him, it’s just fabulous that he’s got there, and by some big margin. He might get to get his life back now… )

After the ice challenge of course, which should reconvene this winter.

Actually given the speed of the land version and the relatively low ice record of just 80 mph or so – I reckon it’s a dead cert he’ll smash the ice record, put your money down if you can get odds.

We’re hoping to bring the Greenbird back to England to put on display somewhere, maybe at our Ecotech centre in Swaffham. More on that later.

On a personal note, it’s been a great pleasure to be a part of this. And to see a purely wind powered craft running at such an incredible speed (and four times the actual speed of the wind) is a huge thing. Greenbird has grabbed headlines all over the world and in the process it’s made an awful lot of people think again about wind power, it must have. For me that was the reason to be involved, Greenbird makes a statement and actually breaks down the door for what’s coming next – the second generation wind powered car, the one you could drive down the shops.

I’m chuffed for all these reasons.

Cheers.

Just thought you might like to know this bit of breaking news from over on the Greenbird site

Richard and the Ecotricity Greenbird have only gone and smashed the World Land Speed Record for Wind Powered Vehicles!!!

Yay!! Big congrats from all of us Richard!

More details to come soon….

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

I was in Norfolk earlier this week for a milestone in the development of our wind powered car, the first turning of its wheels…!

While I was there I met with John Vidal the Environment Editor of the Guardian. He’s a great guy John, enjoyed discussing things with him and he really gets the wind powered car thing.

We made this little video with John while we were all there, should be on the Guardian website as you read this.

Meanwhile we still need a name for the car.

Nice idea from Leo recently was ‘the car with no name’ – reminds me of America’s classic hit – Horse with no name.

Kate (my other half) lobbed in the idea of naming it ‘symbol’ – a reference to Prince (just in case… All good fun. We still seriously lack a name though, that’s despite the tons of good suggestions that keep coming (thanks to everybody for those). Here’s why:

This is the latest image of what the finished car will look like, pretty awesome I think.

And Mojo was front running for me but looking at this image I’m thinking the car really does need a name that’s a bit tougher’, I just don’t think Mojo will work.

I’m currently resurrecting Nemesis as a front runner. Zephyr is also back in frame.

As always, thoughts are welcome.

Cheers.

BTW – Danny of Danny’s Contentment came and interviewed me a while back and has posted them up on his blog:

Part 1
Part 2

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

The first thing I should say here is that this isn’t the last episode of our little video series – it can’t be – we just haven’t finished yet. So expect Episodes 7 and probably 8 of 6 before long…

Second thing to say is I’ve got a new idea for a name. I’m quite taken with it.

The Mojo.

Keen to hear views and feelings on that. I like Zero, but as many people here have pointed out, it’s appearing on cars all over the place, in one form or another.

And Mojo (to me) is less technical, less hard maybe (less macho Damon?… ) and more fun.

So the Ecotricity Mojo – tell me what you all think.

Third thing to say is I went to Norfolk the other week to see the car and although the drives train bits weren’t installed as hoped, it was an exciting visit. It seems that the motors arrived quite a bit bigger than the manufacturers spec and we’re having to adjust the transmission to fit them in (that’s a euphemism BTW… ). That’s been the main hold up anyhow.

Still we’re making good progress, nailing a bunch of issues and having fun in the process.

What more could you ask for.

That’s it. Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Thanks to everybody for that massive response to the last video posting on the wind car. And some more great names rolling in. I’m going to reply globally here if that’s OK.

Couple of people raised valid issues/questions – why aren’t we making a family car for example, or transforming a Prius (nice idea) – and haven’t Tesla already proven the EV sportscar thing?

The answer to all these lies in two parts, timing and my nature.

With regards timing, when this project was first conceived I’d never heard of Tesla and couldn’t find an electric sportscar anywhere, other than concepts (and I did look). To get one I was going to have to build one. Things moved on from there.

As for my nature, I like sportscars – they’re fun. It seemed like the ideal place to start, especially because I think it’s important that being green shouldn’t all be about sacrifice – to engage a bigger audience we need to show that cutting carbon and living more sustainably can be done and can still be a lot of fun. Sportscars turn heads and grab media attention – so I chose that route.

I don’t think Tesla have really proven this concept yet BTW, Top Gear may have been harsh, even manipulative with the imagery, but the serious flaws were real. And of course Tesla are not the only people pursuing this dream right now anyhow. The Lightning looks really good.

The more the merrier I say. We can’t be sure of the success or survival of any car company in these times – especially those trying to bring EV’s to market.

I accept that a family car would have more practical value, I’m not sure if it would have more impact though and that’s what we’re trying to achieve first and foremost. Plus we know this car will cost a lot and high cost is easier to justify if you have a more exotic car – think Lamborghini for example.

And maybe this will be the car that changes hearts and minds at Top Gear. That’s a prize in itself. Love them or loathe them (or just be amused by them), these guys are opinion formers.

On the naming front I’m grateful for all the new names and for the pointers to other cars called Zero. The Italian one looks quite cool, thanks Greenmotor.

I’m still torn.

Anyway, hope you enjoy episode 5 of our video series, things are moving a pace now.

I’m off to Norfolk this week to hook up with the team and shoot the next episode.

Expecting to see the batteries, motors and transmission all installed, have to say I’m more than a little excited by that.

Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Good vid this one, all looks very industrial over there in Norfolk – and stuff is starting to come together.

I’m thinking it’s about time to come up with a name, and I’ve come up with a short list.

First thanks to everybody that sent suggestions, I enjoyed and appreciated them all, very much.

The short list I’ve come up with, and the reasons for each, are as follows:

Zero – Short version of the Zero C suggestion, has a certain neatness about it and many interpretations.  WW2 Japanese fighter of course.  Also a typical car has a badge announcing it’s cubic capacity, valve and/or turbo numbers  – Zero all of this in our case.  And Zero combustion/carbon.  And it has a nice ring to it.  The Zero.

Nemesis – Darker altogether and spawned from my traveller days when 2000 AD (the comic) was a cult read – anyone familiar with that will know the nemesis character.  Pretty awesome.  And Nemesis to the ICE car industry is exactly what EVs and WEVs are going to be, IMO.  Like this one for the dark side.  The Nemesis.

Storm – Weather inspired (not X men… ), toyed with Tornado and Hurricane, both of which I like, but feel that Storm is more understated but still evocative.  This is after all a weather driven car.  The Storm.

I’d love to hear what you all think.  Time to name the Wind Powered Car.

Cheers.

We thought the Greenbird had flown silently past the deafening roar of Top Gear towers, but we were wrong. Check out this link to watch the good ol’ Top Gear boys practically combusting internally at the prospect of cars powered by the wind. They got the wrong end of the stick of course – the fun end of the stick though – shame it ended up in the out-take bin…

The big thing not in those calculations was the embodied energy and therefore carbon in both cars and bikes. Many people on this site argued it needs to be taken into account, and I don’t disagree with that. The inference was, I think, that taking this into account the bike would have a way lower impact – that bit I wasn’t so sure of. I’ve pulled together some figures now.

The original numbers looked at the energy expended by the rider and driver respectively of a bike and a wind powered car – it was only energy used for travel and surprisingly the wind powered car had a smaller carbon footprint. Far smaller.

But that ignores the ‘cost to build’ of each vehicle. Let’s add that in now.

The best estimates we could find for the ‘carbon cost’ of building an electric car are 6 Tonnes. The cost for a bike a miserly 63 kilos. The cost for a conventional gas burning car BTW is 4 Tonnes. So the wind powered car produces a lot more carbon on day one.

It’s hard to imagine that with a virtually 6 tonne headstart the bike is ever going to catch up to the wind powered car in a lifetimes use – but let’s see.

The tricky bit coming next is the number of miles and the number of years to assume each is used for. Cars drive many more miles than bikes pedal, it’s in the nature of the beast, as someone said here because you can do more miles easily, you do.

The average lifespan of a car in the UK is 14 years, the average annual mileage is 9,800.

It might be fair to assume a bike can also last 14 years, it might not. But even if the bike had to be totally replaced, it’s only 63 kilos which is negligible in the scheme of this – so it doesn’t matter if the bike can match the car for lifespan or not.

What about annual mileage? Not so clear. So here’s two scenarios:

10 miles a day (typical bike use?) and 9,800 miles a year (typical car use).

At 10 miles a day for 14 years:
The cyclist racks up 4.7 Tonnes of lifetime CO2. Or 0.09 kg per mile.
The wind car driver racks up nearly 6.4 Tonnes. Or 0.13 kg per mile.
(The petrol car is over 21 Tonnes BTW)

That’s if you use a car like you might use a bike.

How about if you use a bike like you might use a car?

At 9,800 miles a year for 14 years:
The cyclist racks up 12.7 Tonnes of lifetime CO2 . Or 0.09 kg per mile.
The wind car driver 7 Tonnes of lifetime CO2. Or 0.05 kg per mile.
(Petrol car 51 Tonnes…!)

The kg per mile figure for the cyclist doesn’t really change because the embedded carbon cost is so small, it’s lost in the rounding. For the wind car it drops significantly with mileage.

Two things I’d stress here. Cars and bikes are not apples and apples. We use them differently. Cars enable bigger distances and more travel – we take that opportunity. The Wind car wins easily based on the car use scenario of 9,800 miles a year and the Bike wins easily based on the biking scenario of some 3,000 miles a year.

Hang on a minute though, at 9,800 miles a year, that’s roughly 30 miles a day – is that a crazy bike use scenario? I don’t know, but it doesn’t look off the scale.

Second thing to stress – these figures are for energy used by rider/driver and vehicle – and they include carbon embedded in the making of each vehicle. They don’t include hospitals and roads and stuff… (And no, I’m not going there next…

The answer is not what you’d expect I think. On a low use basis (for a car) the cyclist has about two thirds the impact of the wind car driver – better for sure but not exactly as massive a difference as you might have assumed. But on a car use scenario the wind car wins by a bigger margin – the cyclist has almost double the impact of the wind car.

The reason, I’m sure, is that human bodies are not anywhere near as efficient as electric motors – which are some of the most efficient machines we make. Our talents lie not in doing the work of machines but elsewhere…

PS – Here’s a thought – If wind powered cars were made using wind energy rather than fossil fuels (more than feasible in the near future), we could slash the embedded carbon figure for a wind EV by a couple of tonnes perhaps… and it would beat the bike in either mileage scenario. Just a thought.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

You can see the body really starting to take shape here, and hear Peter talk about ‘toughening up’ of the look, from his original.

We’ve ‘placed’ all the parts within the car now and began machining/producing some of the bigger components, like the transmission.

And the batteries have arrived. Crazy thing about that was, to travel by ship they needed to be in their own 40 foot container, for safety reasons – but it was OK to stick them in the hold of a Jumbo jet, as they are… Not sure how that works!

Hope you enjoy the vid.

Cheers.

But it occurred to me – there’s an assumption frequently made that riding a bike is for free.  And it’s not.  You have to power the bike, it’s human power but that’s not free – we need food to do work.

The rates at which we burn calories and therefore food are pretty well established for various activities – resting, walking, running for example – as are the carbon impacts of food and therefore of the calories we use.

Typical daily calorie requirements are also well established.   And if you up your activity level you up your need to eat – it’s that simple.

Easy enough then to take a closer look at just how many more calories it takes to ride a bike, and what additional carbon impact comes from that – compared to the calorie intake required to drive a wind powered car instead.

It might not be surprising to find that driving a wind powered car is actually better in terms of CO₂ impact than riding a bike – after all wind power is zero carbon (the embedded energy in a windmill is repaid in about six months of operation – after that it’s all carbon free) – the assumption though has been that biking is zero carbon too, but it ain’t.

Biking requires 40 additional calories per mile – or 400 additional calories for a ten mile trip.

Using some typical food carbon footprints and assuming ten miles a day for a year you get a total annual impact of 333kg CO₂ – from riding the bike.

This is over and above the normal food impact – which, based on a mixed diet of 2,400 calories a day (for example) would be responsible for 2 tonnes of CO₂ a year – veggies and vegans will do better than that of course.

Driving a wind powered car on the other hand requires 100 calories an hour (to power the driver), which is roughly 4 calories per mile (assuming average 30 mph) this produces 76g of CO₂ for a ten mile stint and a total of 28kg of CO₂ for that 10 miles a day for a year.

The difference is 0.3 tonnes CO₂ per year.  The wind car is one third of a tonne of CO₂ better than the bike…!

Like I say not surprising that wind cars win if you accept that wind power is zero carbon and biking requires more food than not biking.

But the big surprise in all of this, and perhaps the bit that makes it worth sharing – is that an electric car powered by the grid as it is, actually emits only ever so slightly more carbon a year than biking the equivalent distance.

A grid powered electric car travelling 5000 miles per MWh of electricity will produce 94g CO₂ per mile (including the drivers contribution), that’s 342kg per year of CO₂ for the 10 mile a day trip.   Only 9kg of CO₂ per year more than cycling.  And what’s 9kg out of one third of a tonne?

This is counter intuitive I think.

Biking isn’t so obviously squeaky green as it’s assumed to be – it has a carbon footprint virtually equal to grid powered electric cars – that’s a shock to me.  The reason for that is probably that the human body is not the most efficient user of fuel, whereas electric motors hit the high 90 percents.  And even the grid manages around 50% fuel efficiency.

No embedded carbon in the car or bike (or food chain) has been taken into account here of course – just straight use of each.

It might be interesting to look at embedded levels of CO₂ in cars and bikes and calculate how many years it would take for a wind powered car to……

Any volunteers?

Cheers.

PS – A petrol car doing the same 10 miles a day would emit over 1.2Tonnes of CO₂ in a year – about four times that of the grid EV or Bike – and 45 times that of the Wind EV.

^{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.