John Vidal meets green entrepreneur Dale Vince, who is on a mission to make an 'out-and-out sports car' that can go from 0-60mph in four seconds and be recharged by wind power
It is faster out of the blocks than a V12 Ferrari and can do 0-60mph in four seconds. It will go more than 140mph and can be fully charged up over lunch. But the first British electric supercar is not being built by one of the world's great car companies.
It has instead been knocked up in a few months in a Norfolk garage from off-the-shelf parts mostly available on the web.
An A-team of British motorsport engineers was commissioned by Ecotricity wind power company chief Dale Vince last August to "blow the socks off Jeremy Clarkson and smash the stereotype of electric cars".
All have worked for Lotus and between them have developed nearly every car that a generation of petrolheads has swooned over - such as the McLaren F1, Lotus Elan, the Corvette 2R1, the Jaguar XJR15 and the De Lorean. The project leader was director of engineering, and all six problem-solve for the world's top motor sport teams. "The brief was to prove to middle England that electric cars can be quick to develop, beautiful to look at, cheap to run, and run entirely on wind power," said Vince.
The team went on to eBay, and found a second-hand Lotus Exige which they pulled apart. Seven months later, the car, which still has no name, is raised on blocks in the Norfolk garage but is just a few weeks away from full testing.
The consensus is that no large auto company could have developed anything so fast or for the £200,000 budget. "Ford would have taken years and it would have cost millions of pounds," said Ian Doble, project leader.
Makers of car faster than a Ferrari aim to smash stereotypes on electric cars for likes of Jeremy Clarkson and Daily Mail readers
It is faster out of the blocks than a V12 Ferrari and can do 0-60mph in four seconds. It will go faster than 140mph and can be fully charged over lunch. But the most remarkable thing about the first British electric supercar is that it is not being built by one of the world's great car companies with a limitless research budget, but has been knocked up in a few months by some middle-aged engineers in a Norfolk garage from off-the-shelf parts mostly available on the web.
But these are no ordinary men. The small team commissioned by Ecotricity wind power company chief Dale Vince last August to "blow the socks off Jeremy Clarkson and smash the stereotype of electric cars" are an A-team of British motorsport engineers. All have worked at different times for Lotus, and between them have developed nearly every car that a generation of petrolheads have swooned over — like the McLaren F1, the Lotus Elan, the Corvette 2R1, the Jaguar XJR15 and the De Lorean. The project leader was director of engineering, another was chief electrical engineer. All six problem-solve for the world's top motor sports teams.
But the brief they were given was unusual. "It was to prove to middle England that electric cars can be quick to develop, beautiful to look at, cheap to run, and run entirely on wind power," says Vince.
The fact that none of them had ever worked on electric cars was immaterial. With ultimate British pragmatism, the team went on toeBay, and found a second-hand Lotus Exige with about 20,000 miles on the clock. They drove it back from Harrogate and started pulling it apart.
Seven months later, the car which still has no name, is raised on blocks in a Norfolk garage. Chickens run around the yard outside and the A team can barely suppress its excitement. Their car is just a few weeks away from full testing, but with its bonnet and hood off, it looks more like a wreck.
To convert the Lotus, the engineers lengthened the chassis by 90mm, there are 96 lithium-ion polymer batteries, two brushless motors, a completely new transmission, and a lot of electronic wizardry hidden in boxes marked "test". The car's centre of gravity has been lowered and shifted forward, and because the engines have only one moving part and do not need cooling, the engineers have dispensed with the Lotus air ducts and bumps.
The consensus is that no large auto company could have developed anything like this so fast or for the modest £200,000 it has cost. "If this were Ford it would have taken years and millions of pounds to develop. Big car companies are very conventional. We can keep it small and can make decisions quickly. They get bogged down in management systems and find it hard to be innovative," says Ian Doble, the project leader. He also points out that they have created their new car without having to invent any new technology. "The batteries came from Korea, the brushless engines from America. Everything is now available off the shelf."
Vince adds that the engine's virtual lack of moving parts means the car would require little maintenance: "It's a car for life. It will last longer than an ordinary car, the engine will not run out."
The Guardian is not allowed to even sit in it, but with a couple of clicks from a remote controller the twin engines start and the wheels whirr like those of a dodgem. "We thought about adding external speakers to go 'grrrrrrr' or make the sound of birds swooping," said Vince.
Vince is a mix of green visionary and a boy with the ultimate toy. The former hippy, now nearly 50, drove one of the buses on the infamous peace convoy in 1985 which was ambushed by the police at the Battle of the Beanfield, but he survived the mass beating to build Britain's largest independent wind power company and has sat on the government's Renewables Advisory Board.
He admits to being a petrolhead in love with speed and new technology but desperately worried about the state of the planet. His vision is for all 30m vehicles in Britain to be run on wind power via an extra 3,000-10,000 turbines feeding electricity into the grid at off peak times. It would save 25m tonnes of oil, and 12% of all UK carbon emissions," he said.
The only direct competitor for the car is the Tesla, an equally fast all-electric sports car backed by Hollywood A-listers such as George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as the founders of Google. But last month the company which has poured more than $100m into a short production run admitted it was losing money and said it would be scaling back expansion.
"Theirs is a production car and this is a prototype. But from a technical point of view this is way ahead of Tesla, and formula one technology," said Vince. "This is about turning heads. We are trying to reach out to Daily Mail readers. This is making the dream sustainable. We will show Clarkson."