Right Lane Cruiser
10-05-2007, 04:55 PM
Is this the alluring future of the sports supercar -- super efficiency? (http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/04/autos/electric_wright.fortune/index.htm)
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Wrightspeed_x11.JPGSue Zesiger Callaway - Fortune Magazine - Oct. 05, 2007
What would this world be like if all sports cars were worth 150+mpg?
Imagine a super clean driving machine capable of beating a Lamborghini Murcielago, a Porsche Carrera GT, even a Winston Cup car - and which gets the equivalent of 170 mpg. I have seen that future and, even better, I am the only automotive journalist who has driven it.
Ian Wright, founder of Wrightspeed, has built a 1,536-pound, 300-hp electric prototype, the X1, with a 0 to 60 of three seconds. It has a 100-mile range and recharges in under five hours. In sum: insane power and efficiency - no tradeoffs. Drooling yet?
Wright, 51, an electrical engineer, was the first person hired at Tesla Motors. (The company's $98,000 electric sports car, based on a Lotus and considerably slower than Wright's X1 with a 0 to 60 of about four seconds, is due next spring.) For a year he oversaw engineering and vehicle development, but ultimately his vision of an electric performance car and Tesla's were too different.
"What Tesla has done so far is great - they're selling energy efficiency," Wright says. "What we're doing is the next step: We're selling performance and hoping to displace ten-mile-per-gallon vehicles - supercars first and eventually pickup trucks."
He may not be touting efficiency, but that's the principle guiding Wright's work. With an electric powertrain, the wheels are driven only by an electric motor, so about 85% of the energy it takes to charge the lithium-ion batteries gets to the wheels. In a comparable high-powered internal combustion engine, 85% of the energy is thrown away...http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/04/autos/electric_wright.fortune/index.htm
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Wrightspeed_x11.JPGSue Zesiger Callaway - Fortune Magazine - Oct. 05, 2007
What would this world be like if all sports cars were worth 150+mpg?
Imagine a super clean driving machine capable of beating a Lamborghini Murcielago, a Porsche Carrera GT, even a Winston Cup car - and which gets the equivalent of 170 mpg. I have seen that future and, even better, I am the only automotive journalist who has driven it.
Ian Wright, founder of Wrightspeed, has built a 1,536-pound, 300-hp electric prototype, the X1, with a 0 to 60 of three seconds. It has a 100-mile range and recharges in under five hours. In sum: insane power and efficiency - no tradeoffs. Drooling yet?
Wright, 51, an electrical engineer, was the first person hired at Tesla Motors. (The company's $98,000 electric sports car, based on a Lotus and considerably slower than Wright's X1 with a 0 to 60 of about four seconds, is due next spring.) For a year he oversaw engineering and vehicle development, but ultimately his vision of an electric performance car and Tesla's were too different.
"What Tesla has done so far is great - they're selling energy efficiency," Wright says. "What we're doing is the next step: We're selling performance and hoping to displace ten-mile-per-gallon vehicles - supercars first and eventually pickup trucks."
He may not be touting efficiency, but that's the principle guiding Wright's work. With an electric powertrain, the wheels are driven only by an electric motor, so about 85% of the energy it takes to charge the lithium-ion batteries gets to the wheels. In a comparable high-powered internal combustion engine, 85% of the energy is thrown away...http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/04/autos/electric_wright.fortune/index.htm