A car that could save the planet

A car that could save the planet — fast

Friday, May 5th, 2006

I wouldn’t call the X1 a car that could save the planet — fast, but it sure sounds like fun:

Ian Wright has a car that blows away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT in drag races, and whose 0-to-60 acceleration time ranks it among the fastest production autos in the world. In fact, it’s second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million.

The key difference? The Bugatti gets eight miles per gallon. Wright’s car? It runs off an electric battery.

Wright, a 50-year-old entrepreneur from New Zealand, thinks his electric car, the X1, can soon be made into a small-production roadster that car fanatics and weekend warriors will happily take home for about $100,000 — a quarter ton of batteries included. He has even launched a startup, called Wrightspeed, to custom-make and sell the cars.

I find it a bit disingenuous to contrast “eight miles per gallon” with “runs off an electric battery,” since a batter-powered car probably can’t go any distance without carrying a lot of heavy batteries.

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Isegoria

A car that could save the planet — fast

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