Green Options

Oh, the irony: a team hoping to break a land speed record for a wind-powered craft while calling attention to the twilight of the fossil fuel era and climate change has been undone by … climate change, apparently. The Ecotricity Greenbird team had hoped to speed across a dry lake bed in Australia, but the area has been soaked by a summer of unusually [...]

Ecotricity founder Dale Vince and Richard Jenkins, an engineer, will attempt to break the world land-speed record for a wind-powered vehicle on Australia’s Lake Lefroy in the coming days. The current record is 116.7 mph.

According to Vince, the Greenbird uses technology found on Formula 1 vehicles and aircraft to achieve high speeds without an engine. The vehicle uses solid sails similar to those found on aircraft wings. The Greenbird, which is made of carbon composites, can transfer up to one ton of side force into the ground, and is so efficient that it can travel three to five times the true wind speed on land.