Dale Vince, the founder of Gloucestershire-based wind farm company Ecotricity, has paid a team of engineers £1 million (US$1.6 million) to transform a second-hand Lotus Exige into Britain's first road legal electric supercar, the Nemesis. The kicker is that £400,000 (US$646,000) of that £1 million was sourced from the British Government's Technology Strategy Board, with no plans as yet to put the vehicle into production.
The 48yo multi-millionaire is using the 330 bhp (242 kW) Nemesis as his daily driver, something that has upset taxpayer groups:
"It looks totally inappropriate for a millionaire to be cruising around in a sports car funded, at least in part, by the rest of us." said campaign manager Fiona McEvoy of TaxPayer's Alliance.