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.

^{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.

^{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.

^{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.

^{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.

^{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.

Here’s a short video showing our progress so far:

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Should be posting one of these a month now as we count down to the day we get this ‘wind powered car’ on the road.

Our first focus was the batteries – where to put them to keep the weight in the car in the right place in terms of centre of gravity and front/rear weight distribution. And how to house them so that we can keep them physically restrained but control their temperature during charging and discharging and protect them from the elements.

We’ve also been working on a ‘transmission box’ to sit at the rear of the car between the wheels. It’s not a gearbox as such just something to slow down the rotational speeds of the motors a bit, to make them more suitable for driving car wheels, and handle reverse as well, a useful consideration….

And we’ve got a transparent rear boot planned so we can show off all this techno stuff, Ferrari style. That could look pretty cool.

We need a name though (‘a hook’ as they say in those Orange cinema ads, which I love).

Best we’ve come up with yet really is the E type or the Zero.

Suggestions welcome.

Cheers.

Transport is one of the really big issues we have to face up to – how are we all going to get around, post oil and post carbon?

I think the answer is electric cars, cars charged using wind energy – in fact I prefer to think of them as wind powered cars.

We’re building one right now – a car to smash the stereotype of looking like something Noddy would drive. An out and out sports car. Capable of 0 to 60 faster than a V12 Ferrari, able to top 100 mph for sure – and do 150 miles on one ‘tank’. All with zero emissions. Cake and eat it. Petrol head meets zerocarbonista.

We’re making this car with technology available in the world today. Throwing down the gauntlet to the big car companies. If we can do it – why (the hell) can’t you?

Work is underway, I expect this car on the road for the summer.

We’re keeping a film record as we go, hoping we might make this into a film for TV, if not definitely for our web site.

Watch this space! And Clarkson beware, or maybe not. I’ve a feeling he might like it…

e2a: check out the little clip of the video intro