In the days of shrinking oil reserves, Middle East conflict and climate change it’s always good to see people taking some initiative and achieving what was previously thought to be impossible. Australia is a continent famous for sunshine, clear skies and long roads, two German inventors decided to take it upon themselves to build a wind-powered 2 seater electric (road legal) car, pack their own wind turbine and cross the 3,100kms (1,926 miles) between the West and East coasts of the country. Powered by nothing but the wind.

The egg shaped electric car carried a small wind turbine mounted atop a bamboo pole and was also fitted with a kite (from a kite board) for extra propulsion, it achieved a top speed of 55mph on its journey and set a number of world records including;

– The first wind-powered vehicle to cross a continent

– The longest distance covered by a wind powered ground-based vehicle

– The furthest distance covered by a wind powered vehicle in 36 hours

Not bad considering it was built on a shoestring budget in just a few months. Using a portable wind turbine is an interesting idea, it may be possible to fit an extendible turbine to cars like the Nissan Leaf that can be extended up when the car is parked to assist in charging the batteries. Many electric car owners have wind turbines at home and operate their electric cars 100% off the grid, wind power already provides 2% of the general mains electrical power in the USA, that may not sound like much but it puts the USA at the top of the list of wind power supplemented grids ahead of Germany.

For more pictures and information head over to the teams website here.

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