The Green MotorSport Team GB left the UK on Thursday the 9th of June in order to take collection of the WAVE ‘number 3’ car from its sponsor in Frankfurt, Ökolife-Energie GmbH.
The team comprises; Gordon Foat - Managing Director of Green MotorSport and the main WAVE trophy rally driver - and Sebastian Barrett James, Gordon’s co-pilot. The rally set off from Bremerhaven, north west Germany, at 9.00am, 11th June and headed towards Geneva, stopping off at numerous checkpoints in 50 cities across Europe.
On test is the new Chinese E6 BYD electric car, a new introduction from China which is set to trial for the European taxi-fleet market.
Once in Geneva on the 17th June all the WAVE teams will head towards the United Nations and deliver over 300 individual environmental pledges - prepared and supplied by George Abbot School in Guildford, Surrey - for the global event, organised by Louis Palmer and his WAVE EARTH team. The current collection of pledges so far is 12,808 and rising. The WAVE team hopes to achieve a world record and possibly more and the event will be broadcast around the world.
All the teams on the rally are powered by renewable energy with each team investing in what they consume during the rally. The Green MotorSport team 3 car is powered from the energy that is collected by the Moss Solar Trust using a large privately owned photovoltaic array situated in Surrey. The cost of running their entry equates to about £1 per 160 km travelled.
The total amount of miles will be calculated using the routeMASTER GPS tracking system which is installed and remotely managed by AGM Telematics of Corby. The system provides the data necessary to record the full dynamics of the road trip down to the finest detail including location, speed and acceleration.
The BYD electric car is expected to run for approximately 320 km between each charge and will attain a top speed of 160km/h, with 0-60 in 8 seconds. The car also has a very novel charging system that can be connected to a domestic appliance to offset the power on the grid and reduce energy bills. In addition, the car has the ability to rapid-charge in 15mins.
AGM Director George Weston Comments:
“The Green Motorsport philosophy - to provide sustainable alternatives to conventional and less environmentally friendly vehicles - fits well with our own. Our routeMaster telematic system is a cloud-based modular tool set which comprises three core modules - planning, dispatch and tracking - all of which are designed to improve vehicle efficiency and in turn help to reduce energy consumption.”
The real-time tracking module being used by Green MotorSport for the WAVE trial is relied upon by many commercial vehicle fleets throughout the UK and has the ability to provide automatic updates regarding speed, location, acceleration, braking and even hard cornering.
Each day of the rally, Gordon Foat and the team will endeavor to post a blog about their progress.
The Tracking page for the team is located on the Home page of Green MotorSport.
Experts and enthusiasts alike will also be able to monitor the progress of GMS throughout the tour by visiting AGM’s website.
Green MotorSport (GMS) was founded by Gordon Foat in 2001 and is the first company specifically set up to research “Green motor sport”. Gordon and his team have won a number of prestigious awards during the WAVE tours including the People and Environment Achievement award 2012, for sustainable sport. In 2014 the WAVE was accepted by the Guinness Book of World Records as the event with the largest number of electric vehicles.
GMS has spent over 10 years designing, developing and refining electric motors for the light vehicle market that are efficient, powerful and cost-effective. The company now manufactures and sells its own in-house designed liquid cooled electric motor, together with all other components required for an electric drive train solution.