Nesesis, electric supercar built by Ecotricity, sets UK electric car land speed record

The Nemesis, an electric supercar built by UK electricity supplier Ecotricity, broke the UK electric car land speed record on Thursday. The Nemesis, based on a Lotus Exige chasis, driven by Nick Ponting at Elvington Airfield near York, has set the new UK electric car land speed record at 151 miles/hr, breaking the 137 miles/hr record from a couple years ago set with a car built by Sir Malcolm Campbell and driven by Don Wales.

The Motor Sport Association was on hand to officially verify the record. The team made two pairs of runs, with the record in each case being the average of two runs in opposite directions. In the first pair of runs the team broke the existing record with a 148 miles/hr average speed. On the second pair of runs they upped the record to 151 miles/hr.

Because the Nemesis was built by an all-British engineering team, based on a British designed and built car (Lotus Exige), sponsored by a UK wind energy company, on a UK track, the company is playing up the “all British” aspect of the record. It’s possible that the electric motors and other components are also from British companies, as there is at least one British company (EVO Electric comes to mind) making a suitable electric motor.

The Nemesis was built on a Lotus Exige bought second hand on eBay. Ecotricity’s spec sheet for the car says it has a 0-100 miles/hr time of 8.5 seconds, two 125 kW motors, giving 330bhp, and 600Nm of torque. The battery pack is 96 x 100 A/h 4.2 V pouch lithium polymer cobalt cells for 36 kilowatt hours of electrical capacity. Driving range is 100-150 miles depending on driving habits, and whether you can keep the car at a reasonable speed. It cost under £1 million pounds to build, and an 18 month build time.

Mr Vince said: “This is brilliant. We built the Nemesis to smash the stereotype of electric cars as something Noddy would drive – slow, boring, not cool – and I think we’ve done exactly that today. Hopefully this will further stimulate debate about the future of transport in Britain and how we’ll be getting around when the world runs out of oil. What we’ve been able to demonstrate is that wind-powered cars are not just feasible, but can be a load of fun.”

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.