The slender long-legged model saunters away from the
Wrightspeed X1, an electric sports car that has been brought to Sears
Point Raceway by a Bolinas based non-profit in order to race against
two of the fastest and most gas guzzling cars on the market, a $440,000
Porsche Carrera GT, and a $160,000 Ferrari 360 Modena. The model click
clacks her stiletto heels over to a boom box and presses the stop button.
Silence envelopes the racetrack. The X1 bolts from the starring line
without a combustible sound–and without the noxious, global warming
pollutants that normally spew from a sports car’s tailpipe.
EnergyNEXT, a Bolinas based non-profit, brought the
X1 to Sears Point in order to shoot the first scenes of a feature length
documentary film portraying renewable energy as a sexy topic with mass
audience appeal. EnergyNEXT was founded a year ago by James Fox, Maya
Gianini and Boris Zubov. On the board are other Bolinas residents such
as Mark Fraser, who has sponsored part of the production, and the Mainstream
Moms Oppose Bush founder Megan Matson, who serves as advisor.
But everyone at the track is wondering whether the
X1 will be able to beat two of the most exotic sports cars on the market
to the quarter mile. The Porsche Carrera GT, with 605 horsepower is
the fastest car Porsche has ever released to the public and the Ferrari
360 Modena, although not the latest Ferrari the 430 Modena still has
400 Italian-bred horsepower.
James Fox, executive producer and director of EnergyNEXT
has spread his film crew on the racetrack, directing an electric helicopter
with a camera to capture the moment from above. The 37 year-old Bolinas
filmmaker has previously made two award winning documentaries; Out
of the Blue and UFOs: 50 Years Of Denial shown on the Sci-Fi
and Discovery channels. The fascination with cars has been with him
since childhood, when he went on assignment with his dad Charles Fox,
who regularly wrote for Car and Driver.
"We don’t know for sure that the X1 will
really win, but that’s what we’re hoping for," he says
with a nervous smile.
On paper the answer is yes. The X1 prototype, designed
by Wrightspeed in Silicon Valley, can accelerate from 0-60 mph in 3
seconds. That’s half a second faster than the Porsche Carrera GT,
which guzzles 1 gallon of gas per 12 miles driven. The X1 uses 200 kilowatts
per hour, the equivalent of an impressive 170 miles per gallon mileage.
A trip to Los Angeles from San Francisco in the X1, which connects to
a regular power outlet, would cost approximately seven dollars in electricity,
approximately a third of the energy consumption of a gas-electric hybrid.
No boxy golf carts
Ian Wright, X1 designer and builder and CEO of Wrightspeed,
has been fine tuning the X1 until midnight the day before and is looking
forward to showing it off. If he wins, he will use the film to raise
money to put the car into production. The target market is a speed-loving
environmentalist like himself. The X1 costs $100,000 and achieves its
startling speed with a very low weight of 1500 pounds. State of the
art lithium-ion batteries designed by Wrightspeed gives the X1 a range
of 120 miles. The battery will last for about 1000 complete charges.
"I want to prove that electric cars are no longer
the boxy golf carts of the past. The lithium battery technology improves
every day now due to the demands from laptop and cell phones developers.
Compared to the old NiCad batteries, lithium provides higher speed and
longer range," he explains before climbing into the futuristic
looking vehicle.
Hands down victory
The white flag is lowered. The first contestant is the
Ferrari 360 Modena which the X1 rapidly passes in a hands down victory:
on the quarter mile track, X1 clocks in at 11.9 seconds while the Ferrari
trails behind at 13.5 seconds. The Porsche fares even worse, clocking
five seconds slower than the Wrightspeed prototype. The crowd cheers
wildly and the EnergyNEXT team is elated. Producer Maya Gianini tries
to get a smiling Ian Wright to brag about his astounding victory.
"Well, I had to adjust my rear mirror a bit.
Looks like that’s the only one I will be using from now on,"
says the otherwise modest engineer. He is optimistic that the car industry
will — sooner or later — follow Wrightspeed’s example
and fully embrace the electric car.
"The industry will arrive there via the hybrid,
which will be equipped with smaller and smaller gas engines until they
disappear completely. I believe lithium batteries are the future as
they are three times as efficient as hydrogen cells. Right now, it is
entirely possible to build an electric Honda Civic or Ford Focus priced
at around $10,000 with cheaper batteries than the ones I currently use."
No hairy armpits
Since the race, the non-profit has been at work in
Bolinas editing a trailer and researching the next scenes. EnergyNEXT
producer Maya Gianini explains the philosophy behind the process: "We
do not call it alternative energy, we call it next energies. It’s
the future, but in order to bring this topic into mainstream consumer
awareness, we have to present it in a fun, fashionable way with no hairy
armpits or radical leftism."
EnergyNEXT hopes to have the documentary ready in
about a year and a half. As with his previous movies, James Fox plans
to screen the documentary in West Marin prior to its theatrical release.
For more information contact www.energynext.org
www.wrightspeed.com