Imagine a superclean driving machine capable of beating a Lamborghini Murcielago, a Porsche Carrera GT, even a Winston Cup car - and which gets the equivalent of 170 mpg.
Ian Wright, founder of Wrightspeed, has built a 1,536-pound, 300-hp electric prototype, the X1, with a 0 to 60 of three seconds. It has a 100-mile range and recharges in under five hours. In sum: insane power and efficiency - no tradeoffs. Drooling yet?
Wright, 51, an electrical engineer, was the first person hired at Tesla Motors. (The company’s $98,000 electric sports car, based on a Lotus and considerably slower than Wright’s X1 with a 0 to 60 of about four seconds, is due next spring.) For a year he oversaw engineering and vehicle development, but ultimately his vision of an electric performance car and Tesla’s were too different.
“What Tesla has done so far is great - they’re selling energy efficiency,” Wright says. “What we’re doing is the next step: We’re selling performance and hoping to displace ten-mile-per-gallon vehicles - supercars first and eventually pickup trucks.”
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