Kite-Powered Car Drives Across Australia

It's interesting, this current trend of people trying to couple extreme sports and Guinness-record setting adventuring with things like reducing carbon emissions and improving sustainable technology practices. The most recent addition to this group is a pair of German "extreme sportsmen," who made the decision to drive across Australia, from Albany to Sydney, in eighteen days in an electric car powered by a kite.

The developers and pilots, Stefan Simmerer and Dirk Gion, collaborated with the industrial group Evonik to produce the Wind Explorer, a car made from lightweight composites and filled up with a bunch of lithium-ion batteries. When the batteries lose power, all they need to do to recharge is to connect them up to a portable wind-turbine - always easy to come across in the Australian desert. When wind turbines are hard to find they can erect their own, made of bamboo, or use their kites, which can reach speeds of 80 km/h.

Their hope is that the project will inspire more sustainable technology innovation and more awareness about how self-sufficient environmentally friendly transportation can be.

[Via PSFK]