Ecotricity’s New Electric Car Needs a Name

Jan 2

Written by: Aaron Turpen   139 views    

Published on January 2nd, 2009 in Electric Cars

Dale Vince, the CEO of Ecotricity, has announced that their electric sports car, which so far has not been given a name (just tagged the “Wind Car”), is ready to name his electric dream vehicle. Back in May of 2008, Dale announced his intention to “build an electric sports car to rival the Tesla.” Ecotricity, the company Vince runs, is a wind energy company in the UK and the announcement for the car was made on Vince’s blog, Zerocarbonista.

Getting off to an immediate rocky start, the car’s design took twice as long as planned and the first model had numerous mechanical issues. This after $150 million USD had been spent on the project.

Apparently, the car is ready for unveiling, but not until it has a name. To get the ball rolling on ideas, Vince has proposed three names: Zero, Nemesis, and Storm.

The following is my own list of names for this car, since there isn’t much in the way of photographs of it to generate ideas from:

  • Unaffordable: Just like the Tesla.
  • PublicityGetter: Which is what this car is really for.
  • ElCaminoEV: Since for all I know, that’s what it looks like.

Obviously, this project is not just, well, dubious, but on all fronts appears to be nothing more than a publicity scam pushed by this CEO to keep his company in the headlines. So far, nothing of substance has come from this EV other than a lot of publicity for Ecotricity (which is mentioned often in all this).

Sources: 1, 2

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4 Comments

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4 Responses to “Ecotricity’s New Electric Car Needs a Name”

  1. nommo said on January 5th, 2009 at 2:20 am

    “Getting off to an immediate rocky start, the car’s design took twice as long as planned and the first model had numerous mechanical issues. This after $150 million USD had been spent on the project.”

    Not true. Unless you are talking about the Tesla? Speaking of which, the VP of Sales for Tesla went onto Dale’s blog to try and persuade him to buy one of their ready mades (nearly) instead of ‘rolling his own’ - makes interesting reading.

    He is making the car for himself and to demonstrate that it isn’t something that mainstream car manufacturers can justify taking decades to do… his company is also building wind turbines on-site at Lotus HQ to power their manufacturing plant… he was speaking to Lotus about an EV at about the same time as Tesla was. No doubt the company does see it as a PR exercise too - but at least they are actually making something - rather than splashing out on expensive TV ads for example. You seem a bit bitter about this one Aaron - whassup?

    Read the blog - watch the videos, then your ‘journalism’ may end up being informed and impartial - perhaps even factual! ;-) You might even find some pictures as evidence of what it might look like so you can criticise that too :-D

  2. Aaron Turpen said on January 5th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    Really? All the information I used for that article were based on both the car’s website (blog) and the treehugger.com article cited in the sources at bottom. The car is reported to have taken nearly twice the time expected to design and the budget was $150 million according to both sources. So how is that incorrect?

    As for the “actually making something,” the Tesla is FOR SALE right now. I don’t see anything more than PR from Dale and his company on their car. Some computer models, maybe a styrofoam mockup…

    The entire thing, blog and all, comes off as a rich guy CEO trying to make a name for himself and bolster his company’s PR by pretending to make a vehicle without actually producing anything revolutionary. Does this car feature a new drive train, great new battery or propulsion tech, or a design that will make it cheaper to build? So far, all I see is another guy making another high-dollar sports car.

  3. nommo said on January 5th, 2009 at 2:40 pm

    Ah - I see what you mean now… that’s the trouble with using secondary (tertiary?) sources… the Treehugger article is quoting a Telegraph article quoting Dale talking about the Tesla… and you seem to have misinterpreted…

    Why not drop him a line and get it from the horses mouth - he is a busy MD of an electricity company, but seems an approachable guy from what I have read and I am sure he doesn’t deserve some of your criticisms… he is just building an EV for himself mostly, but does enjoy being a disruptive, yet positive influence on ‘the man’ ;-)

  4. home made wind generators said on June 26th, 2009 at 10:12 pm

    Awesome stuff.. Will visit again=)

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