| News
October 2007
Electric
Car Hits High Speed
CBS News
Harry Smith speaks with Sue Callaway of Fortune magazine and Ian
Wright, founder of Wrightspeed, about an electric car that can go
from 0 to 60 mph in three seconds.
October 14,
2007
Is
An Electric Heavy Duty Pickup In Your Future?
PickupTruck.com
You don’t often hear 'hybrid' used in the same sentence as
heavy duty pickup, but if alt-power entrepreneur Ian Wright has
his way, that's about to change.
October 5, 2007
Meet
the world's fastest electric car
CNN Money
Tesla veteran Ian Wright has built the fastest electric car on the
planet. Fortune's Sue Zesiger Callaway takes it for a test drive.
September 26,
2007
The
Wright Way to the Electric Car
Cleantech Blog
While it has been a hot topic recently in the cleantech sector,
I am known among my friends as being a real skeptic when it comes
to EVs, but behind Ian’s business plan he got my attention
with two ideas that are worth repeating: payback and plug-ins.
March 2007
Feature:
Motown, California
RobbReport
The noise will not surprise the folks toiling in a strip of auto
repair shops here in the San Francisco suburb of Burlingame, Calif.
But as Ian Wright eases his vehicle out of his garage and into traffic,
his passenger, having just been introduced to the Wrightspeed X1,
has no idea what to expect. After a quick mirror check, Wright stomps
on the gas pedal, producing a huge sucking sound, like that of a
jet engine. For the automobile industry, this might be the sound
of the future.
January 2007
Science
Investigators Video - Not Your Fathers Golf Cart?
More
Video - Bahareh's Wild Ride
PBS
Are NASCAR drivers ready for a new kind of racecar - one that's
as fast as a Ferrari but only runs on electricity?
May 10, 2006
Electric
Boogie Video
Discovery Channel
It's an insanely fast car that can go from 0 to 100 km/h in three
seconds...on batteries. Have a look at an electric car that can
out-accelerate nearly every other production car on the planet.
May 5, 2006
A
car that could save the planet—fast
Business 2.0 Magazine
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. 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.
April 20, 2006
Silicon
Valley's New New Thing
Business 2.0 Magazine
The car bolts like a Road Runner cartoon come to life, slamming
passenger and driver deep into the seats and hitting 80 mph in half
the distance to the stop sign. There's no engine roar or sound of
screeching tires--just the blast of wind in your ears and the high-pitched
whine of an electric motor. Then, almost as quickly, Wright brakes
the car to a gentle stop. "Not bad, aye?" he says. Not
bad, that is, for a car whose motor has just three moving parts
and fills up at any 220-volt wall jack. The car that the 50-year-old
Wright spent the past year constructing in his Woodside garage has
already blown away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT
in drag races, and its 0-to-60 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. Price: $1.25 million. Mpg: 8.
Race between
the X1 and Ferrari 360 Spyder and a Porsche Carrera GT at Infineon
Raceway
Low
resolution for Real Player (1MB) or High
resolution for Windows Media Player (11MB)
Video - Kron News
Wrightspeed
Electric Supercar
Photos and more - Flickr
The marketing people have it all wrong. Electric is about the future.
It's about SPEED and PERFORMANCE -- unheard of zip and stopping
power. Why not use your know how to build a stealthy electric super-car.
The physics say you can do it now...with batteries (not PEM's) bike
frame technology, carbon fiber body panels, and variable reluctance
electric motors -- safer, faster (accelerating and stopping), quieter.
Put a really nice interior in it. Achieve 0-60 in 3 seconds...
February 19,
2006
Screaming
Fun: Proving the future can be both mean and green
AutoWeek
Working with AC Propulsion of San Dimas, California, Wright installed
a pack of lithium-ion batteries and an AC Propulsion three-phase
AC induction motor into an Atom to make the most screamingly fun
236-hp green statement ever. We know, we just spent the morning
screaming. Wright
says 0 to 60 mph comes up in about three seconds, a thrill ride
you have to experience to believe. You will smile through the bugs
in your teeth all day.
November 8,
2005
Can next energy
solutions beat the best internal combustion engines?
EnergyNext
On the dragstrip today at Infineon Raceway, there was an event that
would make a good story in Autoweek. It was all shot on HD video
for James Fox's upcoming documentary. Ian Wright's new WrightSpeed
EV, using an AC Propulsion drivesystem, devoured a well-driven Ferrari
360 taking 3 of 3 sprints, including a 1/4-mile clocked at 11.95.
That was just the warmup. For the main event, the EV lunched heavily
on a Porsche Carrera GT, again taking 3 of 3. Wright's car had about
10 miles on it when he showed up, so there was some uncertainty
about the outcome of the race with the Porsche. There needn't have
been.
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