They built a ‘green’ mean machine out of a milk float and a 1965 Volkswagen Beetle, which they have named Black Current. Now it has set the world record for being the first electric-powered car to go a quarter of a mile in under ten seconds, managing 0-60mph in just 1.6 seconds.
One of the complaints about electric cars is that, while they’re obviously good for the environment with their minimal carbon footprint, they’re not exactly the fastest thing on four wheels.
But Sam, 30, the driver, and Olly, 34, the designer, have just won the Zero Emissions category at the annual Alternative Energy Racing tournament at Santa Pod with their home-made electric dragster, hitting nearly 133mph in the process.
They had already broken a world record a few weeks earlier, doing a quarter-mile ‘sprint’ in 9.51 seconds with a top speed of 135mph, making them the first ever to break the 10-second barrier in an electric car.
Olly said: ‘You can’t imagine how fast it is...nought to sixty in 1.6 seconds is pretty hard to explain. It felt absolutely awesome.’ They’ve been hand-building electric cars in their small workshop in Hungerford for the last eight years. Olly revealed they came up with the world-beater by fusing two unlikely vehicles - one hardly able to top 15mph without rattling the gold tops - into a single mean machine. They wanted to demonstrate just how powerful zero-emissions vehicles can be.
The car is powered by sixty 12-volt motorcycle batteries, but the brothers believe the car can be made faster still, by using a lithium gel battery pack.
