Interesting Things For you Late @ Night: The green sports car with added vroom-vroom

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

The green sports car with added vroom-vroom | GlamCar.com

The Electric Lightning GT appears to have everything an ecoconscious lover of British sports cars could want: a luxury interior, a top speed of 130mph and acceleration that would put a Porsche to shame.

And all generated from 30 onboard rechargeable electric batteries, with no direct greenhouse gas emissions.

Perhaps just one thing is missing — the throaty growl of a fossil-fuelled high-performance engine that turns heads and opens wallets.

The engineers have thought of that too: the Lightning comes with a “programmable external engine sound generator”, for drivers who don’t want their £120,000 green supercar to sound like a milk float

The Lightning Car Company, based in Peterborough, will unveil its prototype at the UK motor show in London this month. By next year, it hopes to begin delivering them to customers, many of whom have already paid a £15,000 deposit.

Chris Dell, managing director of the company, said the Lightning GT is aimed at people “who are happy to be perceived as being a little bit different but who also care about the environment”.

He said the car was aimed at “high net worth individuals” with an interest in cars. Several celebrities have paid deposits, he said, but would not reveal names.

The company says the Lightning GT will accelerate from 0-60mph in four seconds and will be able to travel up to 200 miles on a single battery charge

It will generate 700 brake-horse-power, about the same as seven Ford Fiestas. Charging the batteries can be done by plugging the car into the mains supply overnight. In time, Dell said he hoped supermarkets and garages would offer fast, high-power charging points that would refuel the car in a matter of minutes.

The Electric Lightning is not the first electric sports car: the US firm Tesla started producing its £55,000 battery-powered Roadsters earlier this year.

Some 900 orders have already been placed and Tesla has just opened its first showroom in Los Angeles. The Tesla will also be at the UK motor show.

Dell denied that the Lightning was just a British version of the Tesla. The battery and motor technology is different, he said, with the Lightning using longer-lasting batteries that can be charged more quickly.

The Lightning is bigger inside too, while the interior can be tailored to an individual’s specifications. It is a two-seater, but promises “plenty of boot space, with golf clubs no problem”.

Based on a petrol-powered Lightning produced by the company since 1999, the electric version replaces the fuel tank, engine and transmission system found in standard vehicles with an electric motor inside each wheel. There is no gear stick, axle or drive shaft.

“All of the power is generated at the wheel, the point at which it’s required, which eliminates mechanical complexity and power losses experienced in standard sports cars,” the company says.

The motors draw electricity from the 30 batteries, each the size of a regular car battery. The Electric Lightning has borrowed the idea of “regenerative braking” used on other electric vehicles such as trains: when the car brakes, the electric motors become dynamos and generate electricity to top up the batteries.

The car will not be a true zero-emissions vehicle unless the electricity used to charge the battery comes from a wholly renewable source, such as wind power.

Renewables currently make up only about 5% of national grid electricity supply, but, according to the Energy Saving Trust, charging an electric car from the mains still produces “significantly less” carbon pollution than using petrol and diesel.

Only a few hundred electric cars are sold in Britain each year, but the government plans a massive expansion as part of a £100bn investment in renewable energy to meet EU targets.

They are exempt from car tax and city congestion charges, and could become more attractive as fuel price rises bite harder. The makers of the Lightning argue that it could save drivers of equivalent petrol cars in London as much as £17,000 a year.

One question remains: just what would Jeremy Clarkson make of it? The outspoken BBC Top Gear presenter is no fan of environmental causes and electric vehicles; the programme once raced a G-Wiz electric car against a table.

Dell said: “That’s a question we’ve often asked and joked about ourselves in the early hours of the morning. Honestly I don’t know, I’d be interested to find out but we won’t be chasing a view. I’m sure in time he’ll be forthcoming with one.” The BBC said Clarkson was not available to comment.

Richard Dyer, the transport campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said: “Image is important to lots of people who buy cars so it would help if cleaner cars were more desirable. We very much welcome the increased interest in electric cars recently, but we have to be realistic and say they are a long way off being a realistic solution to climate change.

Governments and manufacturers should focus on making existing designs more fuel-efficient, he said.