Wind car travels with wind, but faster.

[skids]

This thing clocked 2.8 times the tailwind speed. Beat that, skippers!

Not practical, just neat, and fun due to the hyper-skeptics having to eat crow over the counterintuitive physics.

http://www.fasterthanthewind.org/

[petronius]

1. That is extremely cool - I'm glad I'm not on record as a hyper-skeptic,

because there's no way I would have believed that was possible...

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. Iceboats, and catamarans and planing monohuls on water....

....routinely perform the same feat. People's perceptions are derived from displacement-hulled sailboats.

The relative speed of vehicle and wind are irrelevant.

[gristy]

3. Certainly it was not entirely a tailwind. Had to be coming from the side some.

If the wind is completely at your back, you aren't going to go any faster than the wind.

[skids]

4. Directly downwind, faster than the wind.

That's why it's so neat.

[HooptieWagon]

5. delete

[Ready4Change]

6. How?

Does it sit and charge a battery or wind up a spring?

I understand how sail boats move faster than the wind in a crosswind. But faster than a direct down wind? Makes no sense to me. Once you are going as fast as the wind, you have no relative wind to drive you faster.

I could see if you sit still, and use the passing tail window wind a spring, for example, then let the unwinding spring drive your wheels, that you could then exceed the tail wind speed. Maybe I'm missing something. I couldn't find a 'how this works' link on the website.