Broken Record: New world land speed record for a wind powered vehicle
by Jeremy Korzeniewski on Mar 28th 2009 at 11:11AM 
A British man named Richard Jenkins has just broken the world land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle. The high-tech contraption he used is called the Greenbird, the fifth wind-powered vehicle Jenkins has built. The resourceful Brit designed Greenbird himself over the course of a decade and built the machine almost completely from carbon fiber. Interestingly, Greenbird was sponsored by Ecotricity, the company currently working to build an electric Lotus that will be charged using electricity generated from the wind.
On a dry lake bed in Nevada, Jenkins managed to get his wind-powered vehicle up to an amazing 126.1 miles per hour, handily breaking the old record of 116 mph, which was set in 1999 by an American named Bob Schumacher. According to Jenkins, the event itself was rather uneventful, saying, "things couldn't have gone better." That's great, 'cause a machine like this traveling at that rate of speed sure sounds like it could be dangerous.
Now that Jenkins has successfully broken the elusive record, he's reportedly turning his attention to the ice. "There's still some debate as to whether traveling on ice or land will be faster," he said. Should be interesting to find out, no? Thanks for the tip, teeb!
[Source: BBC]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jharlan 12:26PM (3/28/2009)
Amazing ingenuity and performance! Not only that, it is sequestering carbon.
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G Livey 8:12PM (4/03/2009)
Iceboats go faster. A Skeeter class iceboat hits over 120 mph on a regular basis.
Should be a land speed record as Henry Ford set one of the first automotive speed records on Lake Champlain on ice!
G Livey 8:20PM (4/03/2009)
Apparently Jenkuins already knows he is not the fastest, but perhaps he feels ice is not land.
http://www.carbondragon.us/iceboat/speed_record.htm
harlanx6 9:07PM (4/03/2009)
Ice yachts achieve 8 times the wind velocity in ideal conditions. Land yachts 4 times, catamarans twice the wind speed. It's just a matter of friction and drag.
Carney 9:41AM (3/30/2009)
Useless and pointless.
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ug 4:15PM (3/30/2009)
Well now if we could all commute to work on the great salt lake, this would have some relevance.
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David 8:17PM (3/30/2009)
He did say in another article that practical wind powered cars will come. Holland has a race for them. Since they're powerd by a turbine they can even go directly into the wind.
Here's a list of self powered electric vehicles,
http://www.selfpoweredelectricvehicles.com/
Self powered cars, boats, and even airplanes have been built, and are in use around the world.
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aaron hank 9:52AM (4/06/2009)
Unbelievable! But if he really wants to make a speed record he should wait for a level 5 Atlantic hurricane to hit the coast...
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