I bet we’ll all agree that driving at 500-mph is not green, but there’s something exciting in speed records. Don Wales knows quite a lot about them. He’s the grandson of Sir Donald Campbell, who set several records early last century. Wales already holds one record, he drove the world’s fastest steamcar. Yet, that can’t impress anyone since the speed was only 140-mph. He intends to drive much faster on electric power.

The first goal is to break the 138-mph land speed record for an EV in the UK. That will be at the Pendine Sands in Wales on the first weekend of July. With an experimental car, this first attempt should help validate technical choices. Another car will need to be built to get to an incredible 500-mph, and nothing is known about it yet. Will it run on batteries or on a fuel cell? I wonder about the weight of a battery pack that would hold enough energy to take a vehicle to such a high speed. The motor will have to be custom-built, and that’s not a problem, but the storing of energy is. I estimate that even with 5-tons of battery, that’s barely enough power to drive a few seconds at 500-mph…