Yesterday I got to ride in Ian Wright’s electric supercar, the Wrightspeed X1. In 3 seconds, we went from stopped to 60 miles per hour, and kept accelerating. By the time 8 seconds had gone by, we were moving at over 100 miles per hour. My stomach tightened, my fingers gripped the tubular steel frame for dear life, and we kept accelerating at nearly a full G. Finally, we slowed down, turned around, and the whole terrifying ride started again.
It isn’t the speed that terrifies you. It is how fast you get to that speed. Your brain doesn’t have time to get used to it. The X1 is better than any rollercoaster ride for getting the adrenalin going.
The car runs on $40,000 worth of Lithium Polymer batteries. Driving in a sane manner, it will go for 125 miles on a charge. But nobody buys a car like this to drive sanely. But it will do 100 of those quarter mile races before needing to be plugged in. That’s a lot of adrenalin.
Ian Wright did the driving, and he built this prototype by hand for about $150,000. But he calculates he can make money selling production versions for $100,000 each.