Self-confessed hippy Dale Vince makes for an unlikely supercar builder. "I needed to find a way of reconciling my desires as a petrolhead and a tree-hugger," says the founder of UK green energy provider Ecotricity. On 27 September his pet project, the Nemesis, set a new UK land speed record for an electric car when it hit 243kph.
"When we originally started the Nemesis project in 2008, there was no one offering an electric sports car with the performance I wanted," says Vince, 51. So he set up a development team that included designer Peter Stevens, who styled the McLaren F1 supercar. They bought a Lotus Exige on eBay to serve as a donor car, removed the engine, exhaust and transmission, and replaced them with 96 interconnected batteries and two electric motors. "We really wanted to smash the stereotype that electric cars are Noddy cars that nobody wants to drive," says Vince.
By: Alistair Weaver, Edited by: David Cornish
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via Wired.co.uk
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/02/start/turbo-tree-hugger
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