Playing The Wright Way to Travel

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Battery powered cars are nothing new, but were quickly replaced by the gas-powered combustion engine. In today's climate of global-warming concerns there are a growing number of startups trying to bring back the electric car in a sexy and high-performance way to show the world just what can be achieved while reducing emissions.

Ian Wright from New Zealand, who previously worked for Tesla Motors, is one of the pioneering individuals making a statement with his X1 electric car. Based on the British Ariel Atom roadster and capable of Porsche and Ferrari beating acceleration, this vehicle shows that being green does not have to mean reducing performance and fun. 

In 2005, Wright towed the X1 to a racetrack near Sacramento to see how his prototype would do against a Ferrari and a Porsche. While on paper he was confident of a win, he had not yet fully explored his prototype's real world capabilities.

In the first matchup, the X1 crushed the Ferrari in an eighth-mile sprint and then in the quarter-mile, winning by two car lengths. In the second race, against the $440,000 Porsche, the two cars were even after an eighth of a mile. But as the Porsche driver let out the clutch in a final upshift, his tires briefly lost traction. The X1, blazing along in its software-controlled performance mode, beat the Porsche by half a car length.

It never occurred to me that I would lose," says Kim Stuart, the Porsche's driver. "It was like a light switch. He hit the pedal and was gone."

The X1 prototype is a concept car and a test platform, designed as a proof-of-concept vehicle that will lead to a production car in the future.