When it comes to crazy-cool engineering, nobody can top ze Germans. If it’s even vaguely plausible, you can bet that some German crackpot inventor has done it. Well, now two Germans – Stefan Simmerer and Dirk Gion – have broken three Guinness World Records in a ... wait for it ... wind turbine powered electric car.
That’s right, an EV that’s powered by a wind turbine, those big robotic looking windmills you may have seen in farms atop hilltops in Scotland or Pennsylvania. Here’s how it works:
At night, Simmerer and Gion park the Wind Explorer – that’s what it’s called – and erect a nifty looking collapsible wind turbine. While they sleep, the lightweight turbine generates enough energy to recharger the Wind Explorer’s batteries. If they’re running low on energy during the day, they can whip out a kite that helps powered the vehicle forward.
Simmerer, Gion and the Wind Explorer have recently completed a 4,800 kilometer (2,983 mile), 18 day trek across Australia where they either broke or established three Guinness World Records: the first to cross the Great Southern Land in a wind powered car, the longest distance travelled in a 36 hour period and the most distance travelled overall in a wind powered car.
You can check out some sweet videos of the Wind Explorer’s journey below.
By Tristan Hankins
Source: Wind-Explorer
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4 Comments:
forget the damn kite, why don't they add another kinetic function to harvest the wind energy while driving, the fan's energy causes by driving speed should harvest enough energy to maintain a constant speed.
The laws of energy conservation make that idea impossible. You can't loop energy like that. It gets lost along the way through friction. If it did work, I'm sure every aircraft and vehicle would already have giant wind turbines sticking out of their roofs.
A great accomplishment this guys achieved. Slightly disappointed that the wind turbine was probably transported in some huge SUV...
First Anon, the second Anonymous its (obviously) correct.
Ummmm....it was probably transported by a truck. You know, those things that haul all of our goods about on the open road. How else would you expect it to be transported, by zeppelin?
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