Wrightspeed X1 Electric Supercar
Ian Wright, founder and CEO of Wrightspeed, showed off the X1 in San Francisco Thursday night at a gathering of the Business Association Italy America at Club Sportiva - a sort of exotic country club for car enthusiasts. Watching and listening to this video one would assume that all the roaring would be from the X1 literally destroying the Ferrari off the line, but in fact all that noise is all from the Ferrari, and the only noise made by the X1 is minimal screeching of it’s tires!
The X1 prototype is a concept car, and a test platform. It is not a production car, and never will be. It’s a proof-of-concept vehicle that will lead to a production car in the future. Wrightspeed’s strategy is to bring efficiency to high-end, big-margin gas guzzlers that garner big profit margins. During a 20-minute presentation, Wright said that by capturing 10 percent of the gas-guzzler market, more fuel would be saved than by turning 100 percent of already-efficient gasoline-powered cars electric.
To build this prototype, Wrightspeed looked for the best of the best, in today’s technology. They chose AC Propulsion 3-phase AC induction motor and inverter – the highest power/weight ratio system available.
For the chassis, Wright turned to Ariel, in Somerset. Ariel has created one of the world’s sexiest and raciest F1 inspired legal street cars, as well as the quickest and lightest chassis on the road.
Specifications:
Performance:
Watch as the Wrightspeed X1 Destroys a Ferrari 360 and Porsche Carrera GT.
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April 9th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
Ian Wright, CEO of Wrightspeed, and the X1 electric prototype were recently featured at a BAIA (Business Association Italy America) event. After the event I had the pleasure to interview Ian asking him questions about the new high performance sport car he is building. The complete interview is available on the BAIA blog.
Franco Folini
April 16th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Franco, thank you for the heads up on your April 9th interview with Ian Wright! Those were some excellent questions that you asked him.
Of the many, this quote sticks out the most in my head.. Man that torque must be nuts!
“He normally drives a Porsche Turbo, and I coached him on the fact that there is so much torque, that if you are not going exactly straight, using full “throttle” will cause the car to spin. Immediately.”
August 13th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
The Arial Atom was actually a stolen design from Coventry University, UK. On the 3rd year of the Transport Design MDes course at the uni, students work on a group project. I know one of the guys who was in a group of four students who came up with this design and several cooler ideas. The link with the uni is kept very quiet but I was on the course and now work at the uni and obviously knowing someone within the design group of ‘96 I know the real story. There’s a small link to the uni’s involvement here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Atom but trust me there’s more than meets the eye to all this
Not everyone’s being completely honest and someone ‘may have quit the uni and stolen the design’. But I never said that…