Guest Post: Dave and the Nemesis
Transport, Wind Car
Here’s a guest post for you from Ecotricity staffer Dave. He was recently asked to put the Nemesis to the test as a commuter vehicle! Here’s his thoughts:
A few weeks ago I was asked if I would mind driving the Nemisis for a few weeks. We apparently needed to get a few miles on it and test it in ‘normal’ daily use – whatever that means?
I work in the Ecotricity offices in Stroud and live in Worcestershire, a daily commute of about 51 miles in each direction, assuming that I take no detours on the way home. My normal mode of transport is either a diesel VW or a motorcycle that each do around 50mpg for the journey (over £12 per day in fuel).
Well, the chance to drive a car like the Nemisis was too good an opportunity to miss so of course I welcomed it with open arms, I mean the chance to drive a super car that would do 0-100mph in 8 seconds doesn’t present itself every day! (more…)
The Nemesis has landed
Transport, Wind Car
Finally. About two years after we started – the Nemesis is ‘finished’.
I’ve been meaning to post something before now, but the last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. Here’s a quick heads up, some stuff you might know already from the news, some you probably won’t.
The car arrived in Stroud nearly three weeks ago now (Tuesday the 28th Oct) looking simply awesome. It was the first time I’d seen it in it’s finished form, complete with grey and black union jack paint job and all sorts of other bits and pieces – it really is transformed from the car that was here in the summer of 09 – for a few months.
Wind Car Update – 13 of 6
Transport, Wind Car
Video production: TWA Productions
A day at Bruntingthorpe
Two weeks ago now we took the Nemesis to Bruntingthorpe, for it’s first real track day.
We had two purposes, to test safety followed by speed.
Another kind of Wind powered car
TransportHopefully you will remember the Greenbird? A project we were involved in with British engineer & adventurer Richard Jenkins, which successfully smashed the world land speed record for wind powered vehicles… Richard just sent me an email about another wind powered vehicle project that is quite a mind boggler. Here’s Richard’s thoughts on it – we’d be interested to hear yours…
So, one night, I was happily drinking my beer and tending to my inbox of endless boring emails that had be answered but were of no real consequence, when Lester, my landsailing buddy texted me a link to fasterthanthewind.org. Lester knows a lot, and if he says this needs my attention, then it gets it. I am not sure if it was how many beers I had had, or simply the inane nature of the quest, but I laughed enough to email all my friends to share the absurdity of their mission. My heart is split between belittling idiots, and saluting eccentrics, and this downwind quest lay somewhere in the middle. These loonies were pursuing a pointless goal, doomed to failure, but there was some genuine merit in the myth and their enthusiasm.
I dismissed it as utterly impossible. Travelling through zero apparent wind, with no stored power? Impossible. Why would you even attempt it? (Though I’m no stranger to that question myself!) But had I been asked to bet at that moment, I would have just lost a lot of money.
A few months later I actually met the idiots in question and, to my surprise and concern we not only have a few mutual friends, but they seemed to be rather technically credible. But, everyone makes mistakes, and I let them off as decent people with a blinkered view of fundamentally flawed engineering….
A few months later they were claiming success and if it was not for another great friend, Bob Dill, advising that they were actually correct, I would have discarded their claim as an April fool. I thought about the possibility that I was wrong, and then considered that as Bob was getting on a bit and had a bit of a shake with his stopwatch finger, maybe it was he who was mistaken. There was, however, a growing momentum of technical people (who should have known better), saying that these idiots have actually proven that it is possible to travel faster than the wind going directly down wind.
Not content, I had to witness this myself. When I heard it was on for the official record at El Mirage, I jumped on a plane and went to check it out.
The video speaks for itself. These guys are not idiots, but sincere, genuine, technical people who took a myth and made it real. It works. It starts from rest, trundles to true wind speed, then powers to a multiple of about 3 times the true wind speed. Bob will confirm the final number I am sure.
To all fellow skeptics, start baking that humble pie, or eat your hat. Your choice
Here’s a video Richard shot on the day he visited.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CcgmpBGSCI
Check out the Faster Than the Wind site for more info.
ETA: Just in case you are wondering at the strange tone in Richard’s post (and references to ‘idiots’ and such) – this story has a lot of history, so Richard is referencing the often heated debates about whether this DDWFTTW idea is actually possible or not. As Wired magazines puts it “The concept known as DWFTTW can cause world-renowned physicists to throw their Nobel Prizes in fits of rage.”
You can check out some of those lengthy & heated discussions in the links below:
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/propulsion/ddwfttw-directly-downwind-faster-than-wind-25527.html
http://forum.mythbustersfanclub.com/index.php/topic,12948.0.html
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=128483
Wind Car Update – 12 of 6
Transport, Wind Car
Video production: TWA Productions
We’re getting there….
There was a time when I thought we’d make this car in 12 episodes (actually there was a time when I thought we’d make it in 6)… 🙂
But here we are, episode 12 of 6, and I think we’re still a couple of episodes away from completion.
Nemesis Latest
Transport, Wind Car
Sorry it’s been a few weeks since I posted anything on the car here, or anything at all on this site in fact, my bad – only excuse is there’s a lot going on. More of that next week I hope.
Meanwhile, on the car front:
The new lightweight rear end and rear diffusers are both fitted and fully functional.
The rear end is now stiffer, lighter and much easier to get on and off. Also we’ve got the new rear lights installed and wiring complete now as you can see from the picture. The back end of this car is def its best side.
The diffuser (the bit that wraps under the car at the back, with the number plate on) has its twin flaps, either side of the number plate, one for normal and one for fast charge connections.
Our guys have been working on something dubbed ‘the Lobster Claw’ which is a cable retract mechanism. Looks rather cool and is about 90% complete. Basically it allows you to pull a three pin plug (or whatever connection we choose) from the back of the car, pull out as much or as little cable as you need, plug in and when you’re done, snatch to retract – like a Hoover (or should I say Dyson these days). (more…)
Nemesis update – nearly there.
Transport, Wind Car
Here’s the latest. We’ve almost finished making a new lightweight rear body panel for the car. The old one was very heavy and floppy, so our guys whipped up a new one in carbon fibre. It’ll actually help us with the fitting of the charging equipment by saving the need for engineering up a bunch of structural support – for a panel that’s already too heavy.
We get a slick new carbon body, save a lot of weight (where we don’t want weight – the rear) and make the charging kit an easy install. Neat solution.
We’ve also got a new diffuser coming out of the moulds. This is the bit that sits under the rear of the car. It’s being engineered with some nifty flaps to the left and right that pull down to expose the two charging options:
Normal (13A and slow) or Abnormal (100A and fast).
With some changes to the rear lights and to the internals viewed through the rear window thrown in – this part of the car is going to be pretty slick. (more…)
Nemesis Update
Transport, Wind Car
A quick update on the car front.
I had my first breakdown the other week. I went to drive away in the morning and everything was just dead. Turned out the 12v battery we use to power the control side had gone flat, and oddly enough a couple of fuses were blown. As you can see from the picture, I got the youngest member of the team on the job, with my own personal favourite ‘spanner’…. 🙂
And when we’d finished fooling around we called Bob and he came down and fixed it. No big drama but some useful ‘operational experience’.
Actually things have kind of ground to a halt on the Nemesis. It’s been with me since August, for what was meant to be a months worth of road testing while the Battery Management System (BMS) was finished. Three months later I’ve still got the car and we’ve not got a BMS yet. Which is disappointing to say the least. Everything else about the project has gone incredibly well, but for this – and it’s held us up for over six months now. It’s a frustration for all of us, not just me.
The car goes – it goes like hell, it’s just not ‘plug and play’ – by which I mean I can’t just plug it in to charge it. It takes a laptop and some close attention and we’re not able to charge to the full potential of the cells (for safety). So it’s “close but no cigar”. (more…)
Wind Car Update – 11 of 6
Transport, Wind Car
Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited
Here’s our latest, probably penultimate, video update of the wind car project.
I’ve had the Nemesis (yes it finally has a name) on the road for the last few weeks and it’s been a lot of fun (unless you’re a hedge in my vicinity….:). (more…)
The Wind Car – Epsiode 10 of 6
Transport, Wind CarVideo production: Tim Walter Associates Limited
Is it a Nemesis?
It finally happened. Last Monday on a windswept old airfield in Norfolk, we got the wind car out of the workshop and took it for its first spin on tarmac.
Not entirely without a little drama mind you – the car barely being able to climb the transporter loading ramp at full throttle was a challenging start to the day… 🙂 but we quickly enough adjusted the bugs out of that and it flew, really flew. (more…)
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